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About the Artist
Julia O’Malley-Keyes resides in North Falmouth, Massachusetts, where she lives and paints at Day Hill Fine Art, a showcase for her paintings. Her affinity for the ocean is reflected in her luminous coastal landscapes, seascapes, and paintings of classic yachts including “the five big J’s,” Endeavor, Shamrock V, Velsheda, Cambria and Ranger. In the historically dominated field of Marine Art, she is recognized as the premiere female marine artist in the United States. Ms. O’Malley-Keyes has continued her studies of traditional painting techniques and travels yearly to Europe and Asia to perfect her craft.
Not surprisingly, her work is often found in many of the most respected galleries in the United States. In addition to her home base, she exhibits at the Robert Wilson Galleries of Nantucket and Sarasota Florida, the Gardner-Colby Galleries of Edgartown Martha’s Vineyard and Naples Florida, J. Russell Jinishian Gallery of Fairfield Connecticut and the Weatherburn Gallery of Naples, Florida, among others.
“I’m a coastal person,” she says. “When I travel inland, I start to feel claustrophobic. If I can’t smell salt air, I think something’s wrong.” O’Malley-Keyes, 57, is the daughter of artistic parents. Her father was a published author and her mother was a master weaver. She began painting at age 8, an interest supported by her father, Niall O’Malley-Keyes, a world traveler and avid art collector. “My father kept me in art supplies,” she says, smiling as she thinks of her 8-year-old self “with a highly toxic set of oil paints.” Her family traveled extensively and at age 16, while living in northern New Hampshire, she sold her first painting, of a farmhouse. It was purchased for $250 by a friend of her father’s, Baron Hubert von Pantz., owner of the mountain resort Mittersill. She recalls it being a lot of money back then, though these days her paintings are valued at between $8,000 - $30,000 depending on size and complexity. She also provides her clients with an extensive array of Limited Edition Giclée reproductions of her work which are framed beautifully and very reasonably priced, available at her gallery, Day Hill Fine Art as well as on-line at www.dayhillfineart.com.
Her work is collected by private devotees and corporations. She has also painted commissioned paintings of landscapes, private yachts and portraits for a wide variety of luminaries, including ABC television’s Charles Gibson and Don Graham, publisher of the Washington Post. Most notable among her portraits, at least for fans of music, is the portrait of pianist Harry Connick, Jr. Ms. O’Malley-Keyes has been voted as one of the 400 most influential people on Cape Cod by and independent survey conducted by Cape Cod Life Publications
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