Yulia Kozlyansky was born in Minsk, Belarus, a land of birch trees and forests. She began painting at the age of 5, and it became her lifelong passion.

Her neighborhood was in the middle of the city by the railroad station, which, at that time, was undeveloped and resembled an old village with dirt roads, chimneys, chickens, and roosters. The houses were old military barracks from World War II with primitive living conditions. The winter months were long and cold, and that was when Yulia’s imagination blossomed.

She loved reading Russian folktales, and her earliest literary influences were Hans Christian Andersen, Leo Tolstoy, and Nikolai Gogol.

At the age of 10, her family escaped antisemitism in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to New York to begin a new life. She remembers using the walls of their Brooklyn apartment as a canvas for her art and drawings, which made quite an impression on anyone who walked in.

Yulia studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and pursued an associate’s degree in applied science, where she graduated cum laude in 1992. Afterward, she obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the same institution, graduating magna cum laude in 1994. Besides her focus on painting, she also studied the restoration of antiques.

In 1998, Yulia was an honored artist at the Queens Museum, where she received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition. She was also part of the Don Stacy Studio at Union Square in New York City, an artistic hub, where she worked alongside other artists for seven years. Additionally, she was featured on a Japanese TV show, and her work was reviewed by the New York Times, Daily News, and NY Newsday.