Joan Marie Giampa, Art.D.

About the Artist

Joan Marie Giampa, Art.D. Joan Marie Giampa was born in Arlington, Virginia.  She has a BFA in graphic design from James Madison University, an MFA in painting from the University of Maryland, and a Doctor of Arts from George Mason University. Joan has been exhibiting her work professionally since 1993 and has exhibited extensively throughout the mid-Atlantic region. Her work is in private collections throughout the United States and Europe.  As an M.F.A. student in painting at the University of Maryland, Joan had the privilege of working with Anne Truitt who greatly influenced her work with color and the studio working process. Joan's doctorate is in Art Education with an emphasis on design thinking and visual metaphor. In 2012 Joan was selected to be in MPA’s Something & Nothing: Activating the Void, Juried by J.W. Mahoney. She also has recently been selected for Mary Washington University's annual Mid-Atlantic Painting Exhibition at the Rawls Museum, Courtland Virginia. Joan spent 18 years teaching art, design and visual communications in higher education. Her design work is extended over many decades culminating in the corporate world as a user interface designer creating complex pattern libraries for large software interfaces in the healthcare industry.  

Artist's Statement

Joan’s work is best described by art critic David Betz, as a “sensual organic abstract painting”. Born in Arlington, Virginia, her formative years were spent playing in the wooded areas and creek beds that surround the Potomac River basin. Joan’s iconography is based on objects she finds in nature that she calls "earth objects". Earth objects are small pods, acorns, and various parts of trees and plants that she finds while walking on the C & O canal. Her work has undergone a steady stylistic evolution in recent years and she has developed a painting technique that she calls image archaeology™. Image archaeology is a painting technique whereby you dig or carve into the surface or ground of an image area to create texture. A more formal definition was developed during her doctoral thesis exhibition at George Mason University for the exhibition titled "Painting Anthropology". im-age ar´chae-ol´o-gy™, [im-ij] [ahr-kee-ol-uh-jee], n. 1. The systematic recovery by artistic methods of imagery within the ground of a painting. 2. Digging into the surface ground. 3. The space between the figure and the ground. 4. The constant search for the middle ground. 5. Projected thought that culminates into a work of art.