Rate My Professor Julia Morrisroe

Julia Morrisroe is an artist and Professor of Painting and Drawing in the School of Art + Art History at the University of Florida. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Northern Illinois University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Washington. Morrisroe joined the University of Florida in 2004 and has served as both associate professor and full professor in painting and drawing. Her creative research centers on the question of what it takes to make a painting today in an era of instantaneous image replication, expansion, enhancement, and association. This leads to explorations of hyper-contextualized images through paintings, drawings, installations, murals, and clusters of paintings that reflect on contemporary issues such as Confederate monument debates and environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Her site-specific projects and public art commissions include works at the University of Florida, Jacksonville International Airport, Purdue University, Bakehouse Art Complex, Carnegie Mellon University, SPACES Cleveland, and the South Bend Museum of Art.

Morrisroe's work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad, including in the national traveling exhibition 'Comic Release: Negotiating Identity for a New Generation,' which originated at Carnegie Mellon University. She has received grants from the State of Florida, the State of Michigan, and the City of Chicago to support her artistic endeavors. In 2023-2024, she was awarded a University of Florida State Employee Fellowship for her large-scale drawing installation 'The Confederate Scrolls,' which visualizes the volume of Confederate monuments. Morrisroe co-authored the article 'A Collaborative Approach to Preparing MFA Art Students to Teach at the University Level' published in Art Journal in 2008. Her paintings have appeared in issues of Delos, a journal of translation and world literature, in 2017 and 2018. She serves on the Conference Committee of the College Art Association and the Curatorial Board for 352Walls at the University of Florida. Through her exhibitions, public projects, and pedagogical contributions, Morrisroe has influenced discussions on contemporary painting practices and identity in visual art.