By permission of the artist, The Cyber Art Show is pleased to feature the second of two 12-piece exhibitions of works by contemporary American landscape painter Joan DaGradi (born 1961 in Maryland, USA). 

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Joan DaGradi is a plein-air painter, who often works from memory, and owes a debt to the American Impressionism movement as featured in the works of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Emil Carlson, and many others.

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Joan grew up in Baltimore, studied art in Provincetown, MA and New York, and has called New Orleans home for many years.  As a young artist, DaGradi was taught by Henry Hensche to capture sunlight using oil paint, at the Cape School of Art in Provincetown, MA.  It was a long apprenticeship, supplemented by copying masterpieces in oil by Velasquez, Frans Hals, and Sorolla at the Metropolitan Museum and the Hispanic Society, both in New York. A short course of study as a Chemistry major at the University of Maryland had ended badly when DaGradi realized that she would never be content unless she were free to paint and draw outside.

After leaving Provincetown, DaGradi enjoyed creating bas relief sculptures, and explored the wonderful possibilities inherent in pastel painting, while earning a living painting pastel portraits. Throughout her career, her unwavering focus has always been to achieve mastery of the medium, while finding inspiration from the wealth of amazing work accomplished by great master artists of the past and present.

 

DaGradi was a founding member of the Degas Pastel Society and has achieved Signature status with the Louisiana Watercolor Society. She was recently included in the 2016 46th Annual International Louisiana Watercolor Society Exhibition. 

 

Awards received include the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club Gold Medal for pastel, several Louisiana Percent for Art awards for watercolors, awards from the LA Watercolor Society and the Dillman award from the Oil Painters of America.

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She exhibited with Galerie Kornye West in Ft. Worth for many years, before its closing. She has also exhibited with the  Whistle Pik Gallery in Fredericksburg, TX, the Carol Robinson Gallery in New Orleans, and the Christopher Gallery in Cohasset, MA.

Joan's approach is centered in direct observation, but not a photographic reproduction. She considers a painting successful when the subject matter is treated with a poetic interpretation. As Degas said, “A painting requires a little mystery.…When you always make your meaning perfectly plain, you end up boring people.” Her work at a New Orleans art gallery exhibit drew praise from the former local art critic Roger Green, of the Times-Picayune when he wrote: "DaGradi has contributed the most impressive works to the show.  Her small drawings of local scenes are tiny jewels.  DaGradi's work makes the 'Louisiana Interpretations' credible." An art critic from the New Orleans Gambit Weekly Newspaper also favorably wrote:  "What makes these paintings fresh is that the sites under DaGradi's gentle brush become dreamlike. 'Beautiful and tranquil' best describe DaGradi's work."