Joan McLoughlin, is a contemporary artist currently working in acrylics and mixed media.  She has recently begun incorporating photo transfers into her abstract and semi-abstract paintings.  As her style has developed it has come full circle back to her childhood love of photography.  Her work is expressive and imaginative with vibrant, lush use of color.  She begins with a chaotic canvas, freely painted, with no deliberate plan.  She then reins it in, forming composition, shapes and sometimes recognizable organic images, applying artistic principles as needed.  Joan says “I try to achieve a balance between chaos and control.  I am, by nature, a very structured, by-the-rules, perfectionist type. Art gives me the opportunity to be bold, confident and spontaneous.”  The joy of painting is evident in her work.

 

The artist was born and raised in New York. After earning a BFA degree majoring in studio art and photography at Notre Dame of Maryland University in 2000, she exhibited and sold her art in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C.   She now lives and paints in Wilmington, N.C. She is currently a member of the Wilmington Art Association.  Her work can be seen at her home studio, at  Art in Bloom Gallery,  Eclipse Artisan Boutique and in the permanent collection of the Wilson Center at Cape Fear Community College.