Sacred artist June Jameson was trained in both Old Masters classical realism and French impressionism, and she is recognized for developing a distinct style of portraiture that blends both traditions.

That artistry can be seen on display in numerous homes that have prints of her paintings. Her Marian-themed artwork is particularly popular.

“I painted Our Lady of Grace, which is very feminine, very motherly, when I had a 6-week-old baby. Our Lady is surrounded by all those flowers,” Jameson told the Register. She put it on Etsy, and customers clamored, with Jameson selling more than 10,000 prints.

Patrons have commissioned Jameson to paint portraits in oil, reflecting this multitalented artist’s characteristic delicacy and depth of feeling. Her painting of St. Maximilian Kolbe won one of the top prizes in the Catholic Art Institute’s international “Sacred Art Prize 2025” competition. Her work also appears in books, churches and Catholic institutions and is licensed by the Diocesan Library of Art for liturgical use. She is represented in The Sacred Art Gallery.

She is also a mother of 10 children, the youngest of whom is 7 months old.

Creativity — and Being Called

Jameson, 40, herself was very young when her talent appeared.

“All I wanted to do was draw,” the Ocala, Florida-based artist told the Register. Raised since she was 3 years old by a single father, she remembers always asking him for paper for her drawings that she would tape to walls so that her dad could “tour” her art show.

“I always loved being creative,” she recalled. In high-school art class, she “had an intuitive sense of shape and form,” and the teacher invariably held her work up as an example for others. She also won competitions.

Her religious art grew as a big part of her spiritual journey.

At the University of Florida, she went to parties — until something happened that she attributes to her Catholic grandmother’s constant prayers. At one party, she recalled, she looked around and realized, “What’s the point of all this? This is nothing but emptiness.” She continued, “I left, went in my purse and I pulled out a prayer card of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which my grandmother insisted I carry around. I didn’t hear a voice, but I heard in my heart, ‘I’m Jesus; I’m real. And you need to follow me.’ it was like God calling my name.”

She went to a Catholic church — “because that’s what my grandmother was” — and attended Mass, “and it was like all the puzzle pieces fit together,” she said. She joined RCIA and was baptized, confirmed and received the Eucharist all at age 19 at Easter in Gainesville, Florida. She met her husband Bill in that process; they married at 21 and had their first child that year — all while June was a senior in college.

Studying Her Craft

She planned to be a teacher when the baby grew older. But the family kept growing and her husband’s job took them to Boston. “Being this young family with all these kids, like so many other people, we were struggling just to make ends meet,” Jameson said, recounting how she looked for a way to help from home and also have a creative outlet. In 2011, on Etsy, she highlighted paintings of her children as examples of portraits she offered to paint. People began commissioning her.

Looking to constantly improve, Jameson said she learned, “If you want to do great portraits, look at the Old Masters’ paintings and copy them. That point is when I realized I had been completely deprived of great art my entire life. I never got to go to a museum. I was not shown that in art class.”

In high school, popular magazines were filled with distortions of the human figure, she explained, “but in RCIA I had heard we were made in the image of God, and then all of a sudden, it made sense. It was just so eye-opening.”

“Seeing art like the Sistine Madonna, Michelangelo, the human figure glorified reached into the depths of my very soul, and it lit a fire within me,” she explained, knowing, “This is what I want to do. I want to paint this. I’m going to be the best portrait artist I can possibly be.”

She learned from Old Masters such as Diego Velázquez (ca. 1599-1660), who has been a huge influence — she recently completed a large painting of her interpretation of his Christ Crucified; in her interpretation, she placed the Blessed Mother at Christ’s feet — plus Caravaggio, Vermeer, Rembrandt, da Vinci and Raphael.

“I’ve studied them and spent hours looking at their paintings, doing master copies in black and white of their work,” she explained, adding that she focused on incorporating “the principles and concepts and beauty in that art into the portraits I was doing for people.” As she mastered these techniques, more referrals and commissions came.

“I started to go more and more niche,” she said, as Catholic or other religious people began requesting she paint their loved ones who had died. Jameson asked to know everything about the subjects “because I wanted to paint their presence, not just a photograph,” she said. “I would pour my heart and soul into it.”

Raising her children meant working on her art at night and on weekends because “it just exploded. People loved it.” She even had a waiting list. “It was really wonderful. And I still love doing portraits for people — or like the portrait of St. Thérèse: I had been reading about her so much, and I was trying to paint her presence, not just the photographic likeness [of her].” That similar style is reflected in her commissioned private portraits.

Her favorite portraits to create are of the Blessed Mother and the Infant Jesus. One includes a little lamb she did in homage to William-Adolphe Bouguereau and his timeless classic painting titled L’Innocence. When the family returned to Florida, Jameson added another dimension to her work. She looked to Monet and the French Impressionists and “really got a deep appreciation for their work,” she said, explaining how she brought impressionism to a new level with religious subjects and imagery not done before.

After seeing Our Lady of Grace, customers wanted more in that style. Soon came Our Lady, Star of the Sea, The Nativity and The Annunciation.

Honing Her Style

Then as her children got older, Jameson started returning to classical realism. “But this time I felt like I was better because I had taken that detour,” she said. “I started bringing some of those more abstract elements into my realism, which is basically what the St. Maximillian Kolbe painting is,” she explained, noting the roses and barbed wire behind him in her rendition. “That’s what you would call imaginative realism,” she explained. “That would be my official most-loved style.”

For instance, Jameson describes how The Visitation and The Holy Spirit and the Garden combine realism with impressionism. “The figures and faces are more realist, but all the flowers are impressionistic, and it’s a little imaginative as well,” she said.

“In preparation for that painting and reading about the Visitation, I read there was a legend that in every place Our Lady stepped on her journey to see her cousin, Our Lady’s slipper plant grew, which is why it’s named for that.” These flowers are delicate native orchids in pink and occasionally white and yellow that resemble lady’s slippers. In the painting, where Mary is depicted coming down a staircase, she added, “There’s a trail of flowers behind her because when I read that, I was like, ‘I have to paint that!’ Visually, what more could you want as an artist?”

Jameson is now also working on a commission to paint all 20 Mysteries of the Rosary for a national Catholic organization for devotional use and wide distribution across the Catholic community.

The Rosary is one of her favorite devotions. “I try to pray the Rosary daily,” she said. That also connects to the portrait of St. Maximilian Kolbe and her devotion to the Auschwitz martyr who loved Mary. “He has appeared in my life so frequently,” she said. “He was huge on the Rosary. And he’s been a really good role model for my sons.”

Jameson’s goal of painting large murals is also well underway. She has completed The Crucifixion at the Sisters of Nazareth Retreat Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, and in the works is a commissioned 17-foot, fine-art mural of the Nativity done in marouflage (a centuries-old technique of painting on canvas, usually mural-sized, which is then fastened to a wall or ceiling with an adhesive). She cannot yet reveal who commissioned it. Other works and murals for “really large Catholic spaces” are in the queue, including six murals for a major Catholic institution, “which is phenomenal,” Jameson said. “I never thought I’d be able to do this, and here I am. I wanted to paint huge fine-art murals for churches and cathedrals, and that’s what I’m doing right now. It’s a dream come true.”

Customers are grateful for her work.

“This is the most beautiful work of art that I have ever seen. My heart is overwhelmed with love as I look at this print,” Shellie posted on Etsy about Christ Carrying the Cross.

Harmonee also wrote on Etsy, about Our Lady of Grace, “My favorite piece of art! So beautiful!”

For Jameson, it means lots of sacrifice. “But it’s not impossible,” she said. “Basically, for art, I’ve given up television.” She has not watched a TV show in “so many years. Any free time I have, it’s learning about art and looking at art because it’s after my vocation as a mother and my love for my children.”

Looking back on everything until now, she sees God’s hand in these artistic steps, recalling how she would “pray to God, ‘If this is what you want me to do, open a door; open a path for me and help me get better.’ And he would, always within a day or two, send me some guidance or send me on a path. I’m just so blessed and grateful to be able to do this.”

“I basically want to paint God’s truth and then also to bring heaven down to earth visually,” she said of her purpose and her vision in her art. “And all for his greater honor and glory. That’s my highest goal. I don’t want to paint anything else.”

LEARN MORE

Visit June Jameson’s new website: JuneJameson.art.