Joan is a native of Waukegan, Illinois. She now resides in a rural area with her husband, Lou, near the southern Indiana community of Sellersburg. Since childhood, she has had an interest in art and has taken many classes in watercolor, acrylic, and oil painting. In recent years, she furthered her art education by completing fine art classes at Indiana University Southeast. She paints with acrylics on canvas and has developed her own unique style of folk art painting. Her style is part realism, part imagination, a bit whimsical, somewhat exaggerated, and always happy!

She was featured in the "Country Woman" magazine 1998 March-April issue. The article generated requests for more information from every state in the U.S. and every province in Canada. Most requests were accompanied by heart-warming, complimentary notes. Joan takes pride in that she answered every note when she sent the requested information.

Joan participates in shows where participants are selected by a jury process. These shows have been in such diverse communities as: Ann Arbor, Novi, and St. Joseph Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Chantilly, Richmond, and Roanoke Virginia; Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Columbus, and Toledo Ohio; Columbus, Indianapolis, and Madison Indiana; Delafield and Milwaukee Wisconsin; Greensboro, North Carolina; Kansas City and St. Charles Missouri; King of Prussia, Pittsburgh, and York Pennsylvania; Louisville, Kentucky; Marlborough, Massachusetts; Charleston, Columbia, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Nashville, Tennessee; and Timonium, Maryland

Joan's work is in private collections in many areas of the U.S. and in Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Norway, South Africa, and Switzerland.