CHRISTIE YOUNGER BIO

Christie Younger is a contemporary painter based in North Carolina whose work explores stillness, repetition, and the quiet tension between order and imperfection. She is best known for her floral still lifes, abstract works, and landscapes, often incorporating palette knife painting, traditional brushwork, sgraffito, and subtle applications of gold leaf.

Born and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Younger grew up immersed in nature, travel, and creative exploration. Encouraged early by her parents, she studied painting, ceramics, and sculpture before earning a degree in biology from Appalachian State University. Later should we pursue another degree in Fine Arts and a career in marketing and graphic design. Her background in both science and fine arts continues to inform her work, grounding intuitive expression in structure, observation, and restraint.

After years of living in Boone, Younger relocated to Raleigh, where she and her husband, Travis, began their family. During this period, she stepped away from professional pursuits to focus on motherhood, raising their children, Colin, Camille, and Reese. It was during these years that she felt a persistent calling toward painting, ultimately returning to the studio with renewed clarity and intention.

Younger’s work is defined by a distinctive surface language. She sculpts oil paint using palette knives, brushes, pencils, and sgraffito, allowing early marks, scratches, and gestural lines to remain visible. These marks reference the original sketch, which she views as the purest moment of creative thought, a point where intention first meets the canvas. Rather than concealing this beginning, she preserves it, allowing the viewer to witness the full arc of the work’s evolution.

Her paintings often deconstruct familiar subjects into simpler elements, balancing clarity with ambiguity, control with surrender, and serenity with disruption. Gold leaf appears sparingly, acting as a moment of fracture or reverence within otherwise restrained compositions. The result is work that invites quiet contemplation while revealing complexity beneath the surface.

Rejecting perfectionism, Younger allows authentic moments and unresolved passages to remain present within her work. She views imperfection not as a flaw, but as an essential condition of meaning, one that reflects both the human experience and her faith.

“My art, I hope, conveys the dichotomy between perfection’s existence despite very obvious imperfection and illuminates the frail and fickle nature of our definitions of perfection. I hope the viewer will see something beautiful initially. Yet upon further investigation, I hope they find unhindered blemishes and a messy situation as they get to know my art better. This is both intentional and unintentional as a result of an imperfect artist who has accepted her imperfection only to build upon it to create perfection.”

Younger’s work has been featured in many print publications and various media outlets such as Artists & Illustrators Magazine, Southern Living Magazine, and American Art Collector, exhibited in prestigious galleries, and highlighted across national and international platforms, including HGTV. Her paintings are held in private collections worldwide.

In 2021, Christie and Travis returned to North Carolina’s foothills, settling on family land that has remained in their family since the 1800s. From this rural studio, Younger works slowly and intentionally, producing a limited number of original paintings each year, released in curated bodies of work through select galleries and private collectors' lists.

Alongside her studio practice, Younger is also involved in entrepreneurial ventures spanning fashion, jewelry, and retail. Across all disciplines, her work remains guided by faith, restraint, and a desire to create beauty that endures beyond trends.

“An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success.” Henri Matisse