Julia O'Malley-Keyes | |
Occupation: | Artist |
Nationality: | American |
Julia O'Malley-Keyes is an American painter. She is the founder of the Massachusetts fine art galleries Day Hill Fine Art and her current gallery O’Malley-Keyes Fine Art. She is best known for her work as a maritime artist and her paintings depicting Cape Cod.
Julia O’Malley-Keyes grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, spending the summers with her family on Cape Cod. She began painting as a child and sold her first painting at the age of 16. She moved to Cape Cod full-time in 1969. She received early life training in painting under contemporary artist Henry Hensche[1] and Andrew Wyeth.[2]
O'Malley-Keyes founded her first studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the age of 22, and operated it for ten years. After travelling for a few years, she founded the art gallery Day Hill Fine Art in 1996. She operated the gallery until 2012,[3] then spent five years travelling and living in Panama, where she focused on figural work, before moving back to Falmouth. Her current art gallery is O’Malley-Keyes Fine Art, which she opened in 2012 in Falmouth. She has also shown her works in group exhibitions.
The Cape Cod Enterprise said of O’Malley-Keyes that she is “devoted to highly detailed, action packed oil paintings,” largely of maritime scenes and themes.[4] In 2007 O'Malley-Keyes provided the painting for the Figawi Race, a competitive sailing regatta that stretches from Hyannis to Nantucket.[5] Cape Cod Art described her as a “highly regarded maritime artist whose paintings and prints are in collections around the world”.[6] She is an American Society of Marine Artists Signature Artist.[7]
O’Malley-Keyes has led fine art auctions with the proceeds going to charity.[8]