about
Joan Maureen Collins
Joan Maureen Collins lives and creates in the heart of the vibrant Scottsdale, Arizona art scene. However, she has many influences woven into her work including time spent with artists in Ireland. Her contemporary paintings show and sell to individuals, interior designers, and public works. He art has been described as contemporary, abstract expressionism. She paints to create a transference of her soul journey.
Joan’s painting is physical and messy. She paints like a sculptor, moving, adding, and scraping paint around the canvas. This technique results in striking contours made of heavy, opaque color and texture against thin, filmy transparency. She also makes many of her own brushes for effect, using feathers, ropes, springs, wire, and other desert, beach and urban findings. Joan compares her creative process to jumping off a cliff into an abyss, then floating in the adrenaline of the experience. In the past, she's captured modern impressions of majestic mountains, sweeping skies and primitive landscapes in abstract paintings. She's realized that all around us is a compelling spirit of culture that dots the landscape of our lives and has grabbed this spirit in her work. She's relayed the truth about the rush of urban sprawl that emanates pixels of dynamic urban development onto large canvases, capturing this ethos.
Photographed by Elaine Kessler
My art is a transference of a soul journey. Kiki umami...you can't really explain it, you just know it makes you feel warm and good and is just right.
Like skinny dipping,
In glimmering pools of art,
My soul is exposed.
In art, Joan
curriculum vitae
Joan has gained the attention of local and international venues, public works and private collectors. Her current exhibitions for 2020/2021 include Artist in Residence, Helios Renaissance Chorale, Phoenix, Arizona; public works at the Mayo Clinic Loaned Artwork Program Phoenix, Arizona through May 2020; Free Arts, Art from the Heart Auction, Saks Fifth Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona Fall 2020; SWING, Fall 2020, a co-exhibition with photographer Elaine Kessler. She is currently a top finalist in the “Impressions of Arizona” online exhibition and was a Juried Artist for SeeMe Digital Exhibition, The Louvre, Paris, France; and Xanadu Gallery, Online Showcase, Scottsdale, Arizona. Her other solo and group exhibitions include Urban Ethos at the Olney Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona (2019). Harumi Yoga+ Community Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona (2017); Desert to Sea, her first international showing with co-exhibitor, and Irish artist Majella O’Neill Collins, in Inchydoney, West Cork, Ireland (2016). Sonoran Arts League Hidden in the Hills Studio Tour, Cave Creek, Arizona (2007-2015); Gallery on First, Phoenix, Arizona (2002); UN3 Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona (2002).
Joan served as a Chairman and Vice President of the Board of the Sonoran Arts League from 2011-2014. She also designed and taught a series of art sessions titled “Strength in Women,” from 2012-2013, for women housed in a Phoenix, Arizona based women’s shelter. She studied sculpture at Scottsdale Community College, drawing and painting at the Scottsdale Artists School, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from The Ohio State University.