Born at Whitworth, Lancashire, UK, within a cotton mill-owning family,
Joan took a degree in drawing and painting with a mural art diploma
at Manchester School of Art, attaining a fourth-year scholarship. Later, she was awarded a Royal Scholarship on entrance to London’s Royal College of Art, where she completed a post-graduate course in 1949.

Early in her career she was a member of the Manchester Group.
L.S. Lowry was a member too; an acquaintance whom she recalled
attending meetings, and occasionally giving lectures after his
rounds as a rent collector. The Group, chaired by another
acquaintance, the wood engraver Margaret Pilkington of the
philanthropic Pilkington Glass family, met at the Whitworth Art
Gallery, also run by Margaret Pilkington. Joan exhibited regularly
with the Manchester Group, at the Manchester Ballet Club, in
travelling Arts Council exhibitions, and at the Manchester Gallery.
She also designed murals for UMIST (Manchester). After settling
in London her exhibitions would include those at The Royal Albert
Hall, and with the London Group.

She taught in various art schools and colleges up to degree level,
and lately lectured on anatomy with movement at the Slade School of Fine Art Summer School. In fact Joan was an acknowledged authority
on combining these disciplines informed by her association with the
ballet; an expertise rarely found nowadays. These were
encouraged for many years within her own course ‘Anatomy, Life and
Movement,’ the only one of its type in London, perhaps in the UK.
To her classes she attracted professional painters, sculptors,
architects, and those studying within higher and adult education,.

Joan never stopped her own work, lately mainly drawing.
As a respected source on art anatomy and movement in figure
drawing, she offered instruction regularly.
She continued to exhibit, with others and in one-woman shows.