Julie Mayer was born in Biddulph, Stoke-on-Trent and has lived and worked in the North West since 1980.

Mayer is a painter and studio holder at The Birley Studios, in Preston; she studied both BA (1997) and MA  (2019) Fine Art at the University of Central Lancashire during which time she was shortlisted for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

Selected group exhibitions/residencies/curating include; ‘Artist in residence’, Plas Bodfa, ‘Bodfa Continuum: the possibilities of time’, Anglesey (2022), ‘Lockdown Garden’, also curated this first exhibition in the newly, ACE funded, Birley Gallery, (2022), ‘Far Away Inside’, Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, (2023), ‘Birley Studio members’, Manchester Contemporary, (2023), ‘Pearls and the Oyster’, Birley Gallery, (2024), ‘Surfacing’ curated exhibition of Julie Saul’s’ work, Birley Gallery, (2024), shortlisted for “Derek Hill Foundation fellow, British School Rome, (2024), ‘Remark: contemporary Abstract painting by 4 Northern Artists’, Chester Visual Arts, Chester, (2025).