ARTIST – MOM – HAIRDRESSER – MODEL – SURVIVOR – MENTOR – ADVOCATE
Jacqueline Yulick (Jackie) doesn’t invite you in; she leaves the door wide open. In her electric, color-drenched paintings, women stare back at you—not as dreamlike muses or passive symbols, but as powerful presences with stories to tell. “My art is the communication of emotions,” she says, and with every stroke, that emotion speaks volumes.
There’s a transparently bold and beautiful femininity in your art. Why?
“Because femininity is magnetic—it’s strength that seduces, softness that disarms. The women I paint are not passive figures; they are power in motion. Their gaze isn’t meant to be admired—it’s meant to challenge.”
“I’ve lived the many faces of womanhood: mother, leader, advocate, dreamer. Each role holds a different flavor of allure, not in the traditional sense of beauty, but in presence—in owning space unapologetically.”
“The sensuality in my work is less about the body and more about energy: the quiet confidence of a woman fully in herself, unguarded and unapologetic.”
Yulick’s journey into painting wasn’t rooted in academia—it was born in the everyday. As a hairstylist, she chopped and shaped strands with an instinct for drama. DIY projects filled her downtime with texture, contrast, experimentation. Those early forays weren’t accidents; they were rehearsals, pushing against boundaries long before paint ever touched canvas. And when painting finally took hold, the language was already there—bold, tactile, impatient.
She doesn’t paint for decoration. “As a single mother of two beautiful girls, a dedicated mentor for teen girls in foster care…” Yulick reveals what fuels her—I couldn’t help but shorten the excerpt, but the sentiment is clear—art isn’t escapism. It’s essential. Each woman on her canvas is real and raw—not a figure to observe, but someone to confront. Her subjects look at you and weigh you instantly, and they keep weighing.
Is there a self-portrait of you in any of your art?
“There’s a piece of me in every painting. I’ve never painted my face, but I paint my truths. The women on my canvas carry fragments of my story—the mother who nurtures, the dreamer who risks, the advocate who fights, and the survivor who endures. Sometimes, the sensual charge in my work is my own reclamation—a reminder that vulnerability and power can coexist. That being seen can be both terrifying and liberating. Each painting is a mirror, not of what I look like, but of what I feel.”
In the galleries of St. Petersburg, where tourist-friendly pastels and curated pleasantness sometimes dominate, Yulick’s work feels like a voltage spike. It doesn’t cozy up; it disrupts. Collectors aren’t seeking harmony—they’re seeking collision. Her paintings are beautiful, yes—but in a way that catches you off guard. They ask you to stay with your discomfort, to lean in on their intensity. And they reverberate.
Her studio mirrors the restlessness of her work—a place cluttered with half-finished canvases, brushes abandoned, paint scents that ricochet off walls like challenge. She doesn’t sketch. She doesn’t plan. She enters, and the painting emerges. It is a gamble, but that’s the point. The chaos is her medium.
Art is / isn’t…
“Art isn’t escapism—it’s essential. It’s not about running away from reality; it’s about confronting it with color, movement, and truth. It doesn’t pull me away from reality—it pulls me deeper into it.
Art is my oxygen—it allows me to breathe emotion, to translate silence into something that stirs the senses. It gives breath to what words can’t hold.
For me, art is seduction in its purest form: a pull toward something deeper, something that asks you to stay a little longer, to feel a little more.”
Florida’s art community has taken note—not for its pretty aesthetics, but for its unfiltered force. Her paintings don’t soften the room—they bend it. They’re intimate and explosive, personal and civic, polished and perilous all at once.
What gives her work its staying power is that charge between individual expression and shared experience. Viewers don’t just see their own reflections in her work—they feel like they’re in dialogue with it. It touches something communal, resisting easy categorization or commodification. That’s rare.
How does your professional and personal life influence your art—or vice versa?
“My work and art feed one another. I’m surrounded by people whose lives revolve around compassion, survival, and transformation.”
“Both roles require deep empathy and an ability to see beneath the surface. The children, families, and professionals I encounter remind me of the strength in quiet perseverance. That energy shows up on my canvas. My paintings are emotional translations of what I witness daily—strength, resilience, healing, and hope.”
She’s carving a space—not just in the evolving landscape of contemporary art, but in the cultural guts of St. Petersburg and Tampa. She doesn’t ride the wave—she tests the edges. Her paintings fight for attention, and in doing so they force the city—and maybe beyond—to reckon with what female expression can look like when it refuses to be soft.
If her art hits, that’s because she knows how to hit back. Yulick doesn’t paint to blend in, and that refusal alone feels radical. St. Petersburg might be her base, but her vision is bigger. And the world should be ready. •
