<< Previous Member - List of Members - Next Member >>
Joan Thewsey DFA(Lond) SBA
Biography
Joan specialises in large watercolours of flowers: gardens, landscapes and flowers with decorative china and fabrics. She has been a member of the Society of Botanical Artists for many years.
Joan's works have been published as greetings cards and large poster prints for the international market. She received the Founder President of the Society of Botanical Artists Special Mention on her exhibit of a large gouache Gladiolas Against a Dark Window, and in the 2002 exhibition received the St Cuthbert’s Mill Award for Primroses and Apples. Joan has exhibited in national exhibitions, gaining an award in the Laing Landscape Exhibition. Her watercolour of a lake in France was used in their promotional calendar.
Born in Yorkshire, Joan’s two-year training at Barnsley Art School was followed by three years at the Slade School, London University, where she received a Summer Exhibition Prize, a Goldsmith’s Company Travel Award to study in Florence, and a degree in Fine Art.
For a number of years Joan was head of a very large Art Department in a central London Comprehensive, the department winning many awards and representing Britain in the World Exhibition of Children’s Art at the Expo in Japan. Receiving a second Goldsmith’s Company award, Joan was seconded for four months from her teaching post to develop her own work in Cornwall. She was also seconded part-time to the Institute of Education Art Teacher training department for two years, and for some years presented a number of
12-week courses with lectures and practical instruction for other teachers on Design, Textile and Embroidery for the London Education Authority.
Joan was a visiting tutor at the Sir John Cass School of Art for eight years, and later for many years a visiting tutor at the Victoria and Albert Museum where she presented a variety of courses to fee-paying adults with interest in textile design, plant study, perspective and special studies in the galleries. She was then invited to join another department there to present some V&A courses to teachers. She was invited also to tutor at special events when
awards were given to outside bodies for groups to study at the V&A by companies such as Sainsbury.
Transparencies of many of Joan’s works are held at the Bridgeman Art Library, London.
In 1981 Joan was co-founder, with Brenda Brin Booker, of Five Women Artists Plus, a group of Women Artists who met to encourage each other to promote and exhibit their work publicly. In 2001 it received a National Lottery Award.