profile
Instinctively Joan has always analysed the natural world through pencil and paper, textile, stitch and paint. An acknowledged perfectionist her skills extend to fine art, fashion and textile design, rooted in her formative years designing and making dolls and dolls’ clothes inspired by her mother’s dress-making business. Exposure at London Fashion Week as well as on the fashion and design desk at the Daily Telegraph, and travel to major international fashion destinations has helped to give her work vitality and relevance.
Largely figurative, the narrative that underpins and continually informs Joan’s work involves the interaction between man and the environment. Her drawing skills respond naturally to free machine embroidery, so much of her textiles draw on this medium to create a plethora of arts and crafts and thought-provoking textile compositions. Her continued interest in old master paintings and associated historical data helps her to maintain the exacting and demanding standards she sets herself.
qualifications
2007 … City & Guilds (Embroidery) Parts 1 & 2 – Richmond Adult and Community College
2002 … BA Hons Fashion Studies – London College of Fashion part of University of the Arts
1997 … BTEC Diploma, Art & Design – Fashion (incl. textile design) – London College of Fashion; part of University of the Art
membership
Phoenix Contemporary Textile Group (PCTG)
University of the Arts Alumni
exhibitions
2018 …PCTG, ’Collections, Why Things Matter’, Robert Phillips Gallery
2017… ‘Collections – A Box of Treasures’, The Fountain Gallery, East Molesey
2016 … ‘Strata: A Stitched Excavation’, Robert Phillips Gallery,
Walton-on-Thames
2014 … ‘Threads of Conversation’, Robert Phillips Gallery, Walton-on-Thames
2011 … ‘Old World New Eye’, Robert Phillips Gallery, Walton-on-Thames
2011 … ‘Kingston – Who do you think you are?’, Kingston Museum Art Gallery
2009 … ‘Concrete, Steel, Cloth’, Robert Phillips Gallery, Walton-on-Thames
2009 … ‘Branching Out’ – Isleworth & District Guild – Gunnersbury Museum
2002 … Graduate exhibition, London College of Fashion, London W1
published work
Intellectual Property, Registration Number 3018065
Issue 98 of Felt Matters, magazine of the International Feltmakers’ Association