Biography

Judith Lavendar was born in Detroit, Michigan, just as the United States entered World War II. Raised on a horse farm, her first artistic endeavors were drawing the horses around her, and she dreamed of being a painter and photographer one day. She received her B.A. in fine arts from the University of Kentucky, where she studied with Frederick Thursz and it became her dream to study painting in New York City.

In 1963, her life took a different turn with the death of her grandfather when she went to Michigan to spend the summer with her Grandmother. Judith painted an abstract series called "American Flag in response to the death of President John F. Kennedy. She married, had a son, remained in Michigan, and began a career training horses.

In the years that followed, Judith received an M.A. in Art Therapy and moved to New Mexico, where she studied briefly with Wolf Kahn and then followed the charm and soul of Georgia O'keefe's New Mexico, which ended with a series of bold, colorful landscapes.

Living part-time in Tucson, Arizona, Judith experienced the events of September 11th, 2001, with the other artists in her studio space. Each artist responded to the tragedy in very personal ways while finding that to work at all was difficult, if not impossible. Instead of the figurative and sometimes comedic work Judith had been doing, she painted instead only three paintings of the 9/11 event and then turned away from art to politics for the next several years.

When Judith resumed painting, she continued the "Soldiers Without Battles" series, which began in 1978 and continues today. But in 2004, Judith packed up her Western gear and came to New York to study at the New York Studio School with atelier heads Carole Robb and Bill Jensen, where her work took a narrative turn. While visiting Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the summers that followed, Judith received an MFA from the Massachusetts School of Art and Design, and in 2015, Judith moved back to Florida, where she resides today.

The most impressive feature of her work is her fearless foray into strangely autobiographical and editorial work. The multi-figured compositions refer to politics, the environment, and general political commentary, sometimes serious and sometimes with a bit of humor. She has decided points of view and is not afraid to put them forth.