She paints florals and cloudscapes these days, but local artist Julie Turner remembers her first forays into art started at age 5 with doodles and scrawls for the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
“As a little girl – and as an adult too – I loved Elvis Presley,” she recalls. “I’d send love letters with drawings.
“He never responded – big surprise,” she says, laughing at the memory of her younger self filling the margins with art for her beloved.
Turner, 58, says it wasn’t until a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2003 that she pursued art as more than a hobby.
“I decided after treatment to really work hard on my passion,” she says. “There’s nothing like an illness to give you focus.”