Julia Bottoms is the Buffalo-based artist of a number of widely praised and highly visible murals in the region; she co-produced The Freedom Wall, 2017, with John Baker, Chuck Tingley, and Edreys Wajed. Since that time, she has expanded her production, increasingly focusing on political, social, racial, and gender issues while still grounding her compositions in what she describes as “individuality and character.” Her emotionally charged portraits reveal how, as she states, “people of color have been trapped in someone else’s narrative for too long, and when we have tried to write our own, we have often been erased from the mainstream history books. I believe it is time for us to use the talents we possess to speak our truth. Our lives are worthy of dialogue.” Bottoms is a graduate of SUNY Buffalo State College.