Artist Spotlight: Justice Levine
Artist Spotlight: Justice Levine
We’re all told we should find what we’re most passionate about and follow it. Some of us spend years searching. A lucky few find it very early on. For Justice Levine, she found her passion for drawing as a child and pursued it ever since.
Growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Justice was immersed in the arts. Her dad is a musician, and her mom is an avid arts and crafts enthusiast, having taught Justice embroidery, sewing, and ceramics. She also had a grandfather, an architect prior to his retirement, and grandmother who enjoyed drawing in their free time. When she started drawing, her parents and grandparents were very encouraging. In elementary school, she participated in an afterschool art program which curated shows in local coffee shops featuring the students’ work. Justice continued to pursue art after her family moved to northern California in middle school. During high school, her freshman and sophomore years were spent in an arts and drama program, and she took AP art classes her junior and senior years. For college, Justice returned to New Mexico to attend the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, where she focused on her greatest passion: drawing. Following college, she moved with her boyfriend to Louisville.
Illustration is Justice’s primary artistic outlet. For her, the process of making her drawings as realistic as possible brings the most joy. Justice’s illustrations tend towards magical realism, which straddles Surrealism and Photorealism, combining and juxtaposing elements in odd and fantastical configurations. The end result being realistic depictions of things which could only exist in the imagination. While a few of her illustrations use colored pencil, Justice’s primary drawing implements are ball-point pens. She appreciates their functional similarity to pencils while possessing a permanence and smudge resistance pencils lack. During COVID, she started doing some embroidery work, making handbags and wall art on the side. Using plastic canvases usually used for cross stitching, her embroidery work diverges from the magical realism of her illustrations, often exploring pixelated shape and color instead of line and detail.
If you would like to see more of her work, be sure to check out her Instagram at @lilillustartor. You can also purchase some of her work through her Etsy shop at etsy.com/shop/Lilillustrator.
We’re all told we should find what we’re most passionate about and follow it. Some of us spend years searching. A lucky few find it very early on. For Justice Levine, she found her passion for drawing as a child and pursued it ever since.
Growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Justice was immersed in the arts. Her dad is a musician, and her mom is an avid arts and crafts enthusiast, having taught Justice embroidery, sewing, and ceramics. She also had a grandfather, an architect prior to his retirement, and grandmother who enjoyed drawing in their free time. When she started drawing, her parents and grandparents were very encouraging. In elementary school, she participated in an afterschool art program which curated shows in local coffee shops featuring the students’ work. Justice continued to pursue art after her family moved to northern California in middle school. During high school, her freshman and sophomore years were spent in an arts and drama program, and she took AP art classes her junior and senior years. For college, Justice returned to New Mexico to attend the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, where she focused on her greatest passion: drawing. Following college, she moved with her boyfriend to Louisville.
Illustration is Justice’s primary artistic outlet. For her, the process of making her drawings as realistic as possible brings the most joy. Justice’s illustrations tend towards magical realism, which straddles Surrealism and Photorealism, combining and juxtaposing elements in odd and fantastical configurations. The end result being realistic depictions of things which could only exist in the imagination. While a few of her illustrations use colored pencil, Justice’s primary drawing implements are ball-point pens. She appreciates their functional similarity to pencils while possessing a permanence and smudge resistance pencils lack. During COVID, she started doing some embroidery work, making handbags and wall art on the side. Using plastic canvases usually used for cross stitching, her embroidery work diverges from the magical realism of her illustrations, often exploring pixelated shape and color instead of line and detail.
If you would like to see more of her work, be sure to check out her Instagram at @lilillustartor. You can also purchase some of her work through her Etsy shop at etsy.com/shop/Lilillustrator.