Joanna Brendon is a landscape painter. Some works become more abstract than others, but one can always sense that they are landscape-based. The horizon may shift, the picture plane tilt and there is a degree of ambiguity in her personal response to a landscape; the paintings are essentially about a place, rather than of it. She always works in series, so that one painting informs another, and the gestation period can be months, or even years.

“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

Joanna made a full-time commitment to painting following a career in arts administration (she was the first director of St John’s Smith Square).

In 2005, she created a body of conceptual work for her MA. Her thesis was “Do Visual Artists Need to See?  Exploring Alternative Perceptions”, as a way of confronting her own visual impairment. Three prints are in the V&A and the whole collection is now at Moorfields Eye Hospital. Solo exhibitions have included Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin where she was Artist in Residence, Petworth Festival, the Holywell Music Room, Oxford and The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. She regularly holds an open studio at her home in Chiswick.

“Do you use magic in your pictures?” a 3yr old, SJE Arts, Oxford