Julie Oakes is one of Canada’s renowned artists, supporting the growth of the arts both internationally and in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. She works across diverse media, from drawing and painting to clay and glass. Her studio is filled with large-scale works—dreamlike images of rabbits, ravens, bears, and other wildlife, alongside skeletons, plant forms, men, women, and motifs referencing religious painting. In the spirit of the Buddhist cycle of creation and dissolution, she cuts, weaves, and reassembles older works into new, even more urgent compositions.
She studied cultural theory, art, and social sciences in London, British Columbia, and New York. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in the United States, Canada, Poland, and the Bahamas. Her pieces are represented in private collections worldwide, as well as in the permanent collections of museums, galleries, and universities in Canada, New York, and Hawaii. After returning from New York, she ran Headbones Gallery in Toronto for many years before moving back to the Okanagan, where she continues to host exhibitions and gatherings for the local art community. She is also a driving force behind the establishment of a new municipal gallery in Vernon, significantly contributing to donor engagement for its creation.
For the Ore Mountains exhibition, Julie contributed two works. In Germany, visitors encounter a cougar behind a veil, staring directly through it at the viewer. The cougar symbolizes both the wildness of nature imagined in the Ore Mountains and the liberation of women from societal conventions—asserting that women of all ages can be wild and untamed. Her artistic vision here merges with feminist engagement, wishing women in the Ore Mountains and beyond social freedom.
On the Czech side of the exhibition, she presents a Madonna veiled by conventions and the traditional expectations of church canon. Yet behind the veil, another woman emerges—more grounded, real, and vibrant with life. With this work, Julie continues her artistic journey of liberating women from conventional stereotypes, opening new possibilities for understanding women’s lives and destinies.