Julio’s career is entwined in meticulous execution and insatiable curiosity. He was born in Bogotá, Colombia in the late 1950s during a time of chaotic, socio political forces that inevitably formed the landscape of the developing urban capital that saw him grow up. The stories his dad would embed in his early memory as both him and his younger brother traveled throughout the country in the back of contraband trucks served as the first escapades for an already wandering mind. The easy access his working mother allowed him to matinees and premiers in the Teatro San Carlos of Bogota opened his eyes to the art of the moving image and began exposing him to the work of great pictures and filmmakers. An avid listener of the entire discography of the Beatles, Julio also developed a proclivity for rock and roll and a musical thirst that was quenched only with hundreds and hundreds of LPs. He was a dedicated student, achieving high grades while maintaining the reputation of “El Zurdo de Oro” or The Golden Lefty for his prowess with handling the ball and guiding his highschool’s fútbol team to countless victories and championships. By his mid 20s, Julio had obtained his Architecture degree from Universidad La Salle and begun a short excursion in the firm of Cuellar Serrano Gómez as project architect leading the construction of urban developments in a sprawling Bogota. Quickly realizing that he needed to remain untethered from the spread of corruption in the industry he decided to work on his own and together with his brother began producing events and trade booths for local companies such as Carvajal and Minolta. It is at this point in Julio’s journey that he crosses paths with Flor Nancy Cao Garcia with whom he will establish a life long friendship and navigate the unknown waters of marriage and family. By the turn of the century Julio and Nancy together with their children Johana and Jota are faced with the difficult decision to abandon their lives in Colombia and move to the USA in search of a better future. They set roots in Miami, FL and will later acquire their own property three hours up the East Coast in the small town of Palm Bay. Julio’s first painting is a celebration of his family and recollects the universal and transcendental significance that each member represents in the form of cosmic butterflies. His sensibility for abstract subjects is represented through metaphors of memories, sensations, impressions, feelings which are indelibly sculpted in multidimensional strata of color. Within this layered world he visits and re-visits in each painting, Julio has found terrain where weightlessness is the medium that allows him to explore his own psyche. As a young painter he garners inspiration from a life of unresolved inquiries into his own self, his relationships, the environment around him and the message his work aims to convey. Julio currently lives in Palm Bay where he has set up his painting studio maintaining a balance between his work as a master craftsman and committed painter.