Statement
"With a landscape subject matter that is often intensely familiar to her Joanna Brendon's bold abstracting way of working creates paintings rich in dramatic feeling and entirely mysterious in character." Nicholas Usherwood Curator/Editor
Most of my work is landscape-based. I steep myself in an environment, then explore it intensively - looking, walking, listening to the immediate environment, until it feels very familiar. Initially, I do lots of studies and take photographs; some of the studies I consider to be finished work in their own right, but most are just preparatory to studio-based work. Here, I often work entirely intuitively, without reference to the sketches, but I know the influence is there.
“In some of her works, it may be hard to recognize the influence as her work becomes more abstract and is very much about the place rather than strictly of it".
My intention is to explore and convey the rhythms and patterns of landscape and the personal responses that these evoke, rather than depicting the more obvious vistas. The medium I choose is dictacted by the landscape itself, although occasionally practicalities are also considered!
I economise more and more, aiming to have just clues of the original source. I constantly remind myself of the maxim of the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery; "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away".
Biography
| 2012- | Moorfields Arts Committee |
| 1990- | Ongoing professional practice as visual artist |
| 2008- | Workshops for Visually impaired visitors to The Wallace Collection |
| 2000-2010 | Chair - Artists at Home |
| 2005-2008 | Mentor to Disabled Artists |
| 2003-2005 | London Print Studio |
| 2003-2005 | MA at University of Brighton |
| 1986-2006 | Development Director/Consultant to Sadler's Wells, Rio Tinto, Spanish Arts Festival etc. |
| 1969-1985 | Director: St John's Smith Square |
As well as exhibiting at galleries, Joanna Brendon holds an Open Studio once a year as part of Artists at Home, of which she was Chair and Co-ordinator from 2000-2010. http://www.artistsathome.net
For the past few years, she has also held one in December - 4 Christmas, which she shares with three other artists.
Her main body of work is landscape-based, but she has also produced a series of conceptual prints, exploring the theme of vision, as a means of confronting her own visual impairment. Three pieces from this series are in the permanent print collection at the V&A Museum and six works were displayed in the Saatchi Gallery in 2010. One print, Just Looking has been created for the benefit of Moorfields Eye Hospital.
In 2007, she was Artist in Residence at Brantwood, John Ruskin's home in Cumbria. This proved a fruitful period and led to a solo exhibition there the following year.
In October 2011, she had a solo exhibition at the Holywell Music Rooms in Oxford, being the featured visual artist to mark the 10th Anniversary of the Oxford Lieder Festival.
Prior to her commitment as a full-time painter, Joanna Brendon was founder-director of the concert hall, St John's Smith Square. As well as concerts, she has presented poetry readings and exhibitions and has been deeply involved in fund-raising for the arts and other charitable causes. She is a committed member of the Development Board of Interact Reading Service - http://www.interactreading.org . She also runs occasions workshops for visually imapired visitors to The Wallace Collection
