Joan Elizabeth Meyer

Artist Statement

Joan Meyer is a New York City based artist born in 1960. She does oil paintings on canvas or oil on wood assemblages. Meyer has been refining her style for over 40 years which is a mix of Surrealism, Expressionism and Symbolism where the end results in a unique allegorical pictorial vision and palette. Joan spent her early years growing up in the countryside of upstate New York where many hours were spent exploring the woods, streams and ponds with all the textures and life within. Many things have influenced Meyer’s art. Traveling extensively and witnessing 9/11 and living within a mile of Ground Zero have shaped the tone and subject of many of Meyer’s paintings. The themes of the paintings mix science fiction, an apocalyptic religious belief, current events and an intrinsic closeness to nature that makes it compelling to paint these images. Dreams and a vivid imagination are starting points to making collages, using elements from her own photos, and/or drawing on collectables in a personal trinket cabinet. The paintings have many areas of heavily layered oil paint, wet into wet paint, carved through with a palette knife combined with brush work. Joan has no fear in going back into dry paint and even sanding areas down and repainting. Meyer has over seven years of formal art school training including a BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Steven Greene, Stanton Whitney and Richard Cramer were her influential instructors during that period. Joan received a full fellowship to North Carolina School of the Arts, and a Masters in Art from Florida Atlantic University. She also received a full fellowship and studied painting at the Accademia di Bella Arti in Florence, Italy. Meyer has also taken courses at the Bridgeview School of Fine Arts studying old master’s techniques while incorporating this into her contemporary style. Meyer has shown extensively in galleries and museums, had articles in major magazines and newspapers (Art in America, Interview, The Miami Herald, Art and Antiques Collector’s Edition, etc.) and is in public and private collections. Joan has won numerous awards including the Cultural Consortium Award for South florida. More recently, Joan had a painting featured in the June 10th, 2023 page of Forbes magazine, with both the image of the work and a write up about it. Meyer taught art for 30 years while continuing to paint at the same time. Since retiring from teaching in 2015 she has devoted herself to life as full-time artist with an art studio in Chelsea.