Joan Mullins is a visual artist who works from her home studio in Connecticut. Following an earlier teaching career in South Africa and in the USA, she pursued her dream of becoming a visual artist by enrolling in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut. She graduated with a BFA concentrating in painting and drawing in May 2021.

       Her eclectic approach to painting emerged from a background in theater and literature, both of which use visual imagery in the dramatization of human experience.  The vast landscapes of her Southern African childhood are among her earliest memories, followed in later years, by vistas of the Northern Hemisphere.  She is captivated by the drama of unexpected visual images around her; patterns, shapes, colors, light and textures.

       Her recent paintings, some created in a variety of New England settings, reflect her gradual movement away from more literal, representational works towards an exploration of abstraction through the use of loose brushstrokes, the thick application of paint, the distortion of perspective or scale, and the use of mixed media. While representational paintings provide a roadmap to a final destination, abstract paintings take her into unchartered territory with surprising results.  She enjoys moving back and forth between these two modes of expression.

        Her titles are intentionally open-ended, and some are even provocative. They could be obscure references to song titles, rhymes, poems, current issues, or they could merely provide a playful word association with the image.