Raised in the rolling Palouse hills of Washington State, Joann Doneen was trained by noted artist and teacher, Herman Keyes. This “master/student relationship” empowered her to actualize the artist’s life and to move to Philadelphia to continue her formal education at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Thoroughly grounded in the traditional craft of figure drawing and old master techniques, Doneen’s artistic sensibility gradually evolved to non-representational imagery. During her four years at PAFA, she was awarded many prizes, among them the coveted Morris Blackburn Landscape Prize and the prestigious Thouron Prize. Doneen has appeared in group exhibitions in Florence (Exhibition of Abstract Work by Four American Women) and Venice (International Invitational), Italy.
PAINTING INFORMATIONDoneen creates textural immediacy through the use of oils, acrylics, encaustic, marble dust, and sand. Her technique is best characterized as the spontaneous manipulation and discovery of surface and materials on the traditional supports of canvas and wood. The paintings are inspired by the power, vividness and poignancy of nature. The resulting “landscapes” reflect a clarity that transcends the boundary between outer and inner environment. In sculptured paintings that range from hand held to wall size, Doneen’s intimate marks express cracked earth crust, a serene and distant crest of hill, or the wandering black sketch lines of river and wind. The artist makes use of frontal and aerial perspectives; translucency and mirrored imagery reveal the focus of horizon line that steadies, and then gives way to spatial ambiguities.