MUNTHE ART MONDAY: 
JULIANNE GUINEE

Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

I am an Irish oil painter based in County Cork. I paint women and girls within domestic and everyday spaces, exploring identity, motherhood, memory, and the expectations still shaping women’s lives. Using classical painting techniques, I’m interested in creating work that holds a sense of beauty alongside discomfort or tension. Much of the work is psychologically driven, and I’m especially drawn to the language of paint itself - thick and thin passages, sharp and lost edges, softness against restraint.

I have painted full-time since 2019. My work has been exhibited throughout Ireland, including at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and in 2025 I was awarded the Women on Walls commission at University College Cork.

Julianne is wearing our FAIZA TOP and BEVERLY SKIRT.

Can you name some other female (artists) that inspires you and explain why they do so?

Käthe Kollwitz has always meant a great deal to me. There is such gravity in her work, yet never sentimentality. She painted grief, tenderness, and exhaustion with extraordinary honesty. Her work reminds me how deeply art can move people and make them feel understood.
I’m also drawn to Louise Bourgeois. I admire how fearlessly personal her work was, and the way she refused to disappear into domestic life. There is something very powerful in the story of her reclaiming her kitchen as a space for work after her husband’s death. Paula Rego is another artist I return to often. Her paintings feel fierce, vulnerable, and psychologically charged. I love the way she painted women’s experiences without softening them, and how she used storytelling and symbolism to create tension beneath seemingly familiar scenes.

What has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?

I would like people to notice the tension within the work — in the subject matter, but also in the way the paint is handled. The contrast between thick and thin passages, sharp and lost edges, softness and unease. I’m interested in that place where something can feel beautiful yet slightly unsettling at the same time.

Julianne is wearing our BRAULIA JACKET and BEVERLY SKIRT.

Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?

To be a woman making work is often to create alongside interruption, expectation, and care for others. I came to painting after becoming a mother, so my life as an artist has unfolded beside domestic life rather than apart from it. I think that changes how one observes the world. It sharpens attention to emotional undercurrents, to tension, and to the things left unsaid.

What would you like people to notice in your artwork?

I would like people to notice the tension within the work — in the subject matter, but also in the way the paint is handled. The contrast between thick and thin passages, sharp and lost edges, softness and unease. I’m interested in that place where something can feel beautiful yet slightly unsettling at the same time.