Juliene Sinclair - Engineer, Muralist & Visual Artist

Juliene Sinclair

Juliene Sinclair turns boring walls into epic attractions. She’s a Bozeman-based artist who believes in fiercely pursuing your dreams. For Juliene, this includes a combination of persistence, patience, perseverance, failure, hard work, trust, doubt, self-forgiveness, and self-motivation.

Juliene has always been an artist, and as a kid she drew, painted, created and imagined. As she got older, art fell by the wayside. It wasn’t necessarily her passion, and as so many of us do, she chose to go in a different direction. She found herself studying international business in Spain for her first year of university, then moving to Southern California and spending a few semesters at community college. From there, she applied to an environmental engineering undergrad program. She picked painting back up as a hobby, but at the time it wasn’t her main focus - and she continued to work towards becoming an engineer.

It wasn’t until her first job as an engineer that Juliene realized something was missing. She wasn’t happy or fulfilled the way that she had hoped or anticipated, and she started playing around with the idea of having a side hustle in the hopes that she could start painting again. In the meantime, she sat for the professional engineering exam - and she failed. It was devastating, but she continued to work towards becoming licensed and she took the exam again. Regardless of whether she wanted to be an engineer or not, she know that she wanted to prove to herself that an artist could also be an engineer. (P.S. she passed!)

During the months that that she was studying to re-take the exam, Juliene was able to fit in her first (unpaid) mural for the City of Bozeman in one of their parks, and in some ways the rest is history. She won the Bozeman Beautification Award, and she leveraged that award and press coverage to get her first commissioned mural in downtown Bozeman. I’m so excited for you guys to connect with Juliene, check out her work and her murals, and follow along as she continues to paint and create because of the joy it brings her and others, all while juggling her full-time engineering job.

I'd love it if you'd introduce yourself, what you do, and what you're working on.

My name is Juliene Sinclair and I am a professional engineer by day and a budding professional artist by morning and night! I’m currently working on juggling my full time day job with creating my art business on the side - it’s starting to take off and is keeping me on my toes. 

 My main gig is painting murals that turn boring walls into epic attractions. I am also working on developing my own style of canvas artwork, which has been on quite a journey of its own. 

How did you get started?

As we all were, I was an avid artist when I was a kid - my mom had me in all the art classes and I created all the things.  Then, like most of us, as I got older I stopped creating artwork so much. I got rejected from art schools out of high school and to make a long story short, ended up studying engineering even though I had struggled with math my whole life. 

When I got my first engineering job out of college, I was so disappointed to realize that it wasn’t for me. That joyful, excited, and inspired person that I used to be had almost disappeared - instead I was now always obsessing about how to escape this trap that I had been lead into. In my anxiety, I got busy with various side endeavors - selling random stuff on Amazon, getting conned into a pyramid scheme, private labeling - I was trying all the things. Deep down I knew that I wanted to pick my paintbrush back up, but I kept telling myself I would have time for that once I made one of these side gigs work and escaped my full time job. 

During these anxiety and confusion filled years, I took my first swing at the professional engineering exam - the brutal 8-hour engineering math exam that one must pass to get their professional license. Even though I didn’t really want to be an engineer, I had been told by many to get that license no matter what. So I studied. And then failed … hard.

After failing, I waited a couple years to retake the exam. The first time was so traumatic and I was in such a bad place in my life - my relationship with my now husband was heading down the toilet, I hated my engineering job, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself, I was fiddling around with all these side-hustle gigs that were distracting me from my end goal, which was to create art.  Eventually though, side hustle after side hustle not only failed but became a drag on my soul. Luckily though, I was failing fast and after a couple years, I realized that creating art wasn’t supposed to be the destination, it needed to be the journey. 

And so, I took the side hustles off my plate and immediately felt lighter.  I started filling my time with painting - not knowing where my art would take me. I started working on my relationship, taking better care of my mind and body, and seeking immediate joy instead of the steps that I previously had believed would get me there.

After a few years, I decided it was time to retake the exam.  I had to put my art on the back burner once again to buckle down and study, but it paid off - and I passed the second time (whoo hoo!).

After I passed, my artwork came back to the front burner and exploded.  With the exam behind me and knowing I was never going to have to take it again, all of the obstacles I previously saw before me shrunk away.  I even was able to get in my very first (unpaid) mural over a long weekend during my study months, which won a beautification award from my City.  I was able to use that one mural and award as leverage to get my first commissioned piece this year. Then another commissioned mural. A couple of fun free ones, and now, although I still have my full time engineering job, my art business is starting to have its own legs. I have more commissions coming in slowly but surely, and an endless fountain of inspired ideas within me.

The moment I decided that my art was the way and not the destination was the moment everything changed for me.  After making that decision, my passion drove me me instead of my fear of complacency - a fear which drove me to be busy, instead of focused.  

What inspired the work that you're doing?

The work that I am currently doing is inspired by nature and wildlife. I originally was painting really big and wildly colored human portraits. They were really stunning, but when I moved to Montana and was trying to figure out how my art fit into this wild place, I was having a tough time with it.  I didn’t want to be another Native American or Cowboy portraitist, so I started painting landscapes to switch it up. After a while though, I didn’t just want to be another landscape artist either. So I switched from acrylics to watercolors for a while, just to loosen up my creativity. Watercolor requires you to hand over a lot of control to the medium and so it felt really creatively freeing, which is just what I needed.

Once I started really getting into murals - I found myself painting lots of wildlife on walls. And, I started missing acrylics again! Since this summer of 2019, I have transitioned back to acrylics and portraits, but now portraits of wildlife. I am working on combining some of my previous spiritually related portrait work with wildlife work to convey that connectedness you get when you are in nature and especially when you encounter wildlife.

What is your biggest passion? Do you feel like you're living your passion and purpose?

My biggest passion is creating. I feel strongly that each person on this planet has a unique gift that they bring to this world. There’s only one of us, there’s only this one life - and so for me it would be a shame to not push fully into my uniqueness. It took me many years of confused struggle to figure this out but now I am fully on that path of creating. I want everyone to be inspired to go on the journey of discovering their unique gifts and sharing them with the world - I hope that by pursuing my dreams I can inspire others, even just a bit, to do the same.

What is your joy blueprint? What lights you up, brings you joy, and makes you feel the most alive?

My personal joy blueprint is healthy living plus creative living mixed with strong friend and family relationships. I know this to be true because when I am physically and creatively stagnant for too long, I get grumpy and anxious. Creative living means painting and consistently breathing more life into my art business. Healthy living means trail running, hiking, hunting for my own meat, gardening for our own veggies, raising chickens, and feeling connected as much as possible to my human roots.

When pursuing a dream business with a full time job, it’s easy to get fully caught up in “the goal” and say No to socializing. However, we have great friends and family and I make sure to hang out with them regularly because they keep me sane and happy.

How do you live intentionally? Are there tools/resources/practices that you rely on to help you stay mindful and grounded?

Life pulls us in so many ways that I don’t believe in a fully sustained balance/intentionality in life. I think at best we can just teeter around the center. Keeping this belief in mind helps me live intentionally by swinging back to the center when I veer off course: nodding to my less than perfect humanity, acknowledging that some days I will be/feel/act better than other days, and forgiving myself when I am not the best Juliene I could be.

Other than this, I have learned to say No to activities and events that don’t contribute to my goals or light me up. I work on my art business every day and try to stay in a positively manifesting consciousness for it - recognizing that I can’t do everything at once and just doing my best each day. I get out in the mountains regularly and I meditate as much as I can even though I struggle to stay consistent.

With all that being said, my main practice for staying mindful and grounded is practicing gratitude daily. Gratitude gets me out of negative mindsets, and keeps me inspired and my heart light. Even in our worst moments, 99% of the time we actually are doing OK, and that is something to be grateful for!

What would your younger self think about what you're doing now?

My younger artist self would be pleased with what I am doing now. It took me so many years of struggle to realize where I want to go and what makes me happy. So it feels great to be in alignment with my true self - a true self that I knew when I was younger and wiser.

Do you have a go-to mantra or affirmation?

Oh that’s a tough one.  I am a walking encyclopedia of inspirational quotes and have one for pretty much every situation. However, there is one main habit that I contribute much of my growing success to and that is waking up at 4 am during the weekdays. The time in the morning between 4 am and when I take off for my day job is the most precious productive time I have to work on my art business.  After work brings time with the husband, cleaning, making dinner, errands. As you can imagine though, waking up at 4 am isn’t always easy and so when the alarm goes off at 4 am and the blankets feel too good, I tell myself this mantra: 

 “If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.”

I love this mantra because it isn’t just applicable to literally waking up, but also the more metaphorical “waking up” to what it takes to make your dreams come true.

What is your biggest dream?

My biggest dream is to have a financially sustainable art business where I paint murals for awesome clients, license my artwork for epic brands, and eventually I want to start teaching others how to build a creative business while they have a full time job. Before I passed the professional engineering exam, I was so bogged down by the potential obstacles between my present life and my future art business that I never thought it was possible. Once I passed the exam though, all of the obstacles just melted away and I just started making it happen. I would love to help people overcome similar obstacles and teach them how it can be done even with a full-to-the-brim schedule and seemingly few resources.

To learn more about Julienne and her work you can visit her website www.julienesinclair.com and follow her journey on Instagram @julienestudios

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