Justin Shull paints with an eye toward how we connect: people to landscape, art to business, humans with each other. Explore his vivid and unapologetic Northern Michigan landscapes to watch his canvas come to life.
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There is something startling and recognizable about Justin Shull’s landscape paintings. It’s an immediacy and intimacy as if the artist had been taken by surprise—maybe pulled the car over to catch the last light of day slanting over a farm field or stopped in mid-walk through a back alley, captivated by converging power lines. They are scenes that feel familiar and yet are seen through a passionate perspective, infused with unapologetic color and life.
It’s a perspective that has the crackle of a new infatuation. Which it is, in a way; before capturing Northern Michigan on canvas, Shull grew up in New Hampshire. He earned a master’s in studio art, living in various places across the country, teaching and working in video game art direction to help forge an income with his work in new media pieces dependent on grant funding.
But earning a living as an artist is a dance on shifting sands. In 2017, Shull and his then-wife, artist Colleen Gleason, decided to move their family and reinvent in order to better create a different life; Justin was ready to get back to making art. “I was paying the bills with other jobs,” he says, “and I want to paint, so? After working with commercial artists for seven, eight years, I saw they were finding a way to thread that needle of priorities to make art and also make a living.”
Photo by Justin Shull
Fishtown Art Shanty | Acrylic Gouache on Paper Mounted on Cradled Panel 30 x 36″, 2021
They shortlisted seven micropolitan areas—livable, beautiful, strong sense of community, supportive of the arts—and Traverse City trumped them all. The couple bought and re-habbed a dilapidated farmhouse and Shull shifted his energy toward creating art that would earn him a living.
“That’s what informed me going back to the landscape,” he says. “I love the landscape. For me it’s a balance … is there an intellectual challenge that is relevant in looking at the landscape, and is it appealing enough to an audience that someone would pay for that to support me continuing painting?”
Short answer: Yes. His landscapes are unapologetic and vivid, which he credits to seeing with the fresh eyes of someone who does not know them intimately or take them for granted. “I’m just a painter, painting what I see where I go,” he explains. “There’s a certain distance for me, for the paintings. People are emotionally connected to, say, that barn, that intersection. I don’t have the familiarity and that’s the value of it as an artist … I show up with fresh eyes, somewhere new, responding to it.”
Photo by Justin Shull
Three Barns | Acrylic Gouache on Cradled Panel (Triptych) 48 x 16″, 2021
Photo by Justin Shull
River Flows | Acrylic Gouache on Panel 36 x 36″, 2021
Photo by Justin Shull
Orchards in the Snow | Acrylic Gouache and Acrylic on Paper Mounted on Cradled Panel 22.5 x 22.5″, 2021
He paints both en plein air and in his Traverse City studio, where the morning light streams in past the tiny army of succulent plants on the long windowsill, brightening the colors of his work hanging on the walls. Over here, a detail of a flower garden that’s been painted over and started again. On an easel in the back, a commission of a cottage in Glen Lake. On a long wall hang bold landscapes as well as newer, conceptual works, such as the cobalt blue canvas with two human figures awash in monarch butterflies.
Here, in his work-live space at the Tru Fit Trouser complex in Traverse City, Shull is steering his career into new territory, balancing both his observational pieces with more conceptual works.
Photo by Justin Shull
Leland | Acrylic on Linen 20 x 20″, 2021
Photo by Justin Shull
Lake Ave. & E 10th St. | Gouache on Paper 22.5 x 22.5″, 2019
Related Read: Indigenous Artist Samantha TwoCrow: Beads of Life.
“I want to [give myself the chance] to see what I would make if I were not looking at the landscape … some themes that are important, things to open up to intellectually, societal themes about how technology is transforming our culture, reflection on relationship and how we relate to others and the world.”
It’s a bit of an artistic crossroads for Shull, who says he’s devoting the next one to two years to see where the art takes him. But for now, that’s with firm roots here in Northern Michigan, and the influence the landscape has on life here. “I find the creative production and productivity with the land to be synergistic,” he says. “It’s embodied in a certain open-mindedness and creative approach to production systems and marketing, which is just like art—making one thing at a time at a small scale.”
Photo by Justin Shull
Interstices | Acrylic Gouache on Paper Mounted on Cradled Panel 22.5 x 22.5″, 2021
Cara McDonald is executive editor of MyNorth Media and Traverse Northern Michigan.