The selected work shown here dates from 2005 to 2007.

Born at Whitworth, Lancashire, UK, 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 acheived a post-graduate degree 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,’ at the WMC, 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, mainly drawing, particularly in the
WMC Life Class. As a respected source on art anatomy and
movement in figure drawing, she offered advice to students regularly.
She continued to exhibit, with others and in one-woman shows.