onto a canvas, into a story
paintings. short fiction.
/the stories behind the paintings
Joy is a self-taught artist who began drawing one day during a long jury duty stint that limited communication to a pencil and pad of paper. She eventually learned to sketch and paint, and within a seven-year period had moved into oil painting.
The themes she most often explores in her paintings involve the two places she calls home–the farmlands of rural Ohio and Northern California’s wine country.
/short fiction
Joy has been writing stories for over three decades. As a college student, she was named the Most Promising Fiction Writer–an award that came with ten books of stamps to mail out manuscripts and a manilla envelope to store rejection letters.
She has worked as a writer, writing hundreds of professional resumes, proposals, websites, brochures, newspaper and magazine articles, but enjoys turning the mundane and spectacular into small works of fiction.
/about joy
Joy is a business development consultant who has spent the last two decades combining her consulting work with the school pick up line. She has degrees in Journalism and Political Science, and worked as a reporter in central Ohio before moving to Northern California. While awake feeding babies at 3 a.m., she’d watch old episodes of the Banana Splits and Brady Bunch and write down ideas for stories. She also picked up pencil and paper and began trying to draw, eventually teaching herself to paint with acrylics and then oil paints. A recent empty-nester, her stories and paintings have been a joy to develop as she navigates a new phase in the life of her family.
“Bats in the garage, cactus at sunset, a roadside cheese barn. . .it all finds its way onto a canvas or into a story.”
Joy is a jack-of-all creativity trades and in the last decade has embarked on a series of adventures: running a half marathon in the giant Redwoods, re-starting the piano lessons she abandoned in high school, going on a plein air painting retreat, knitting hats, writing obituaries, playing Needle and the Damage Done on guitar, hiking to the top of Mt. Diablo, writing short stories, and following her beloved (and infuriating) Cleveland sports teams.
“I’m a testament to practice outweighing talent.”
/artsy types podcast
one half of the artsy types podcast
Joy and Teresa were raised in rural Ohio and met in the second grade while hanging upside down from the monkey bars. Teresa was drawn to art even then, and Joy to creative writing. After decades focused on building careers and raising families, they’ve returned to their creative roots to reinvent themselves as artists. Today they hang out from opposite sides of the country, indulging in long calls about the pursuit of creativity – and they’re inviting all artists, or just Artsy Types, to join the conversation.
“Painting is my way of prolonging what I see in nature. Of remembering a specific day.”
The Napa Valley in Autumn
joyspaintbrush 