Joy is an Atlanta artist and art educator, born and raised in the foothills of Appalachia.
She graduated with a degree in art from what was then a women’s college, married soon after graduation, lived in Puerto Rico a year, then moved to Texas with her husband where she completed a master’s degree in art education, worked as curator of education in art museums, and continued studies in a variety of visual art media. In the culturally rich environments of Houston and Dallas her involvement in the arts grew to include several ongoing interests such as haute couture inspired by a stint as a runway and house model for a large luxury department store, Outsider self-taught art, public art programs, and urban architecture. Places and people carry meaning and memories. They continue to inspire, and, like her art, she is a layered work—in process.

About Joy...

My art making is a layered process that begins with random marks on paper or canvas, then experimentation with materials and patterns. I add black or dark color for structure, leaving white or bare areas for openness between swatches and drips of color. I love the contrasts and differences from translucent to thick paint, small to large marks, darks and lights, risky areas with the more controlled. I am drawn to non-literal abstract expressionism, my work always inspired by sensation: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch from experiences recent and past—many long past. I remember and savor sensations: leaves and blooms of the snowball viburnum outside my kitchen window; whir of the fan on the screened porch; cold, clear creek water and the muddy bank; pleats of a skirt, seams of a quilt; chords of a symphony, riffs of Santana’s guitar; tang of okra pickles stuffed with pimento cheese. Each art work develops differently. And as a composition emerges, however near or distant the sensation in time and space, it is the immediacy of the process that compels me.