Easton MD – -(Ammoland.com)-The Waterfowl Festival is pleased to announce the selection of Julia Rogers as its 2017 Featured Artist. Rogers began exhibiting at the Festival in 1979 as a high school student and has only missed a few years of exhibiting in the Festival’s painting galleries over nearly four decades.
“We are thrilled with this year’s Featured Artist selection,” said Waterfowl Festival President, Albert Pritchett. “As a resident of the Eastern Shore and long-tenured exhibitor, Julia has a unique understanding of the Festival and its impact on the local community as well as the intersection between art and conservation. It has been the Festival’s pleasure to showcase her work as it has evolved over the course of her career.”
Julia Rogers is the Festival’s seventh Featured Artist and the first woman chosen for this distinction.
“I am truly honored and proud to have been selected as this year’s Featured Artist, and I am especially pleased that a woman was chosen for the first time,” said Rogers. “In wildlife and sporting art, there are not that many female artists, so it’s important and significant for women to receive recognition.”
As Featured Artist, Rogers will create an exclusive, Eastern Shore inspired painting that will be sold only at the 2017 Waterfowl Festival. The image will also be featured on this year’s Festival poster. In addition, Rogers’ exhibit at the Festival will also showcase her Eastern Shore roots and will focus on the wildlife, habitat and landscapes of the Chesapeake Bay Region.
In her youth, Rogers spent time at her family’s second home on the Miles River where she began photographing, sketching and painting the wildlife she observed while on adventures in her 8 foot sailboat. One year while attending the Festival, her father, a regular Festival visitor and volunteer, encouraged her to submit her paintings.
The following spring, Rogers presented her artwork to the Art Committee at the Festival’s offices, then located at the Tidewater Inn, for review. Her work was accepted and she has returned ever since.
As an Easton resident, Rogers has both an artist’s and local’s view of the Festival’s marriage of art and conservation. “When you live here and go on about your life, you start to take it all for granted. So when you see the place you live through an artist’s vision, it renews your love of the beauty that is here and your commitment to conserving it.”
Rogers is a self-taught artist who is passionate about constantly evolving by attending masterclasses and workshops and seeking new inspiration both from the work of other artists and her travels. Her earliest inspiration came from her mother, an artist, and her father’s passion for sporting and the outdoors. Into adulthood, nature and wildlife have continued to be her primary source of inspiration as she travels around the world and observes animals in their exotic habitats.
Rogers is a member and serves on the Board of the Society of Animal Artists and regularly exhibits in their annual show. She has also been featured in the prestigious Birds in Art Exhibition and had work purchased by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. She is a regular exhibitor at the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston South Carolina and also attends other wildlife art shows across the country.
Rogers is married to fellow Festival Artist, Matthew Hillier, and she has three children and recently welcomed her first grandchild. She and her family enjoy frequent travel and spending time on the water in their sailboat on the Miles River.
Waterfowl Festival Inc., a partner of Waterfowl Chesapeake Inc., is dedicated to wildlife conservation, the promotion of wildlife art, and the celebration of life on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. For more information, to volunteer, or donate, visit www.waterfowlfestival.org or call 410-822-4567.