Dr Julie Dowling (29th January 1969 - ) was born in Subiaco, Western Australia and grew up in both semi-rural and urban areas in a large Badimaya extended family.

Working in a social realist style, Dowling draws on diverse art traditions including European portraiture and Christian icons, mural painting and Badimaya First Nation iconography.

Dowling works like an ethnographer, recording the deep-seated injustices in the Indigenous community. Her pictorial works have a strong political edge, however, she speaks as a de-colonised subject and subverts the traditional power relations between the observer and the observed, the colonizer and the de-colonised.

She was awarded a Diploma of Fine Art at Claremont School of Art in 1989, a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Curtin University in 1992, an Associate Diploma in Visual Arts Management at Perth Metropolitan TAFE in 1995 and Honorary Doctorate in Literature (Honoris Causa) from Murdoch University 2002.

Since her first solo exhibition at Fremantle Arts Centre in 1995, Dowling has earned a substantial national and international reputation as an artist of extraordinary vision and one of the most collectable artists.

Her work has been exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally, notably at Art Fair Cologne in 1997, Beyond the Pale: Contemporary Indigenous Art, 2000 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, and the RAKA AWARD: Places that name us, ‘Strange Fruit’ a retrospective of 15 years at The Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2003. K1 #5 Cologne - Germany in 2017, 'Babanyu (Friends for Life) Art Gallery of Western Australia 2018.

Julie Dowling identifies culturally & politically as a Badimaya First Nation woman and not as an 'Australian Aboriginal'. Known as an artist & activist within Australia using the research methodologies of her Badimaya culture while creating a uniquely global art as she is the first in her family to go online using the internet.

Dowling is also inter-sectional as she is disabled and a fair-skinned First Nation woman. Her portrait of identical twin sister Carol titled "Sister girl" was selected for the prestigious Archibalds in 2001. In doing so,  she became the first Aboriginal woman known to have had a work selected for the Archibald exhibition.