She is the wife and collaborator of Boris Vallejo, the artist who produced much of the 90s-era fantasy art, especially Conan the BarbarianandBarbarella also much of the 90s Marvel character art for collector cards, which for our generation is quite significant. If you owned a Marvel superhero card collection with super-realistic features, chances are either Vallejo or Bell painted it.
Bell’s own work produced a broad range of works crossing genres from fantasy art, used futures, and the creatures in the natural world.
She also did work for MTV, Coca-Cola and Nike, and helped in painting the film trailers for National Lampoon’s Vacation, and the Aqua Team Hunger Force Movie.
Throughout the 90s,over 100 fantasy book cover illustrations for science fiction and fantasy magazines were painted by her, 90 of which were done in the 20 years to 2009.If you played a fantasy video game for the SNES, or Sega Game Gear, she most likely painted the game cover.
As you may have noticed, some of the artworks feature not must of the powerful men you’d traditionally in fantasy art, but powerful women as well. Vallejo and Bell liked to depict women who displayed strength, power and athleticism - and modelled the female figures on some of her friends.
In fact, Bell, who was previously a competitive bodybuilder - was herself the model for her own art as well as that of her husband’s. She was her own muse and her own canvas, in paint and in the gym.
Bell was and still is, as passionate about fitness as well as her art. It is these twin passions that fuelled the hyper-realistic figures with such defined anatomies. Her talent made her a notable figure in the fantasy art and comic book scene.
She won multiple awards for her art including several first place awards for the Art Renewal Center, and honorable mentions, multiple Chesley Awards - the award given to recognise science fiction and fantasy artistic works, and the Socity of Animal Artists Southwest Editors Choice Award.
She currently resides in Beaumont, Texas, continuously working on her paintings, although her work has recently had more of a focus on the natural world.
Her sons - Anthony and David Palumbo is also a fine artist in his own regard, David in particular, produced work for Magic: The Gathering as well as Heavy Metal Magaine, gaining clients from Tor.com to Lucasfilm, by way of Marvel.
In short, Julie Bell has an enduring influence on popular culture, one that covers an entire generation from everything ranging from board games to film.
Everybody knows Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell features an amazing painting by Richard Corben on its cover. But did you know the ‘Loaf (rest in peace!) tapped Bernie Wrightson, Michael Whelan, Julie Bell, and Boris Vallejo for cover art as well? See all the images here:
