Welcome to Artwork by Joanna

Welcome to my new, more hands on blog/website! This photo is a view from the front of my Utah studio for Artwork by Joanna. Check out

"Pages" for samples of my work!

Please feel free to "follow" me and/or email:

artworkbyjoanna@gmail.com

That's My Room!

This a mural in what was, That's My Room of Sugarhouse, Utah. Jon and Aimee are the owners of this now completely on-line fabulous store (www.thatsmyroomutah.com) and I'm looking forward to doing more with them in the future! Painting is "what I do," which makes it a sort of therapy as well :-)

Nihongo 102

This is a portion of one homework assignment for my Japanese class. I still need to memorize today’s CC (core conversation), there are 3 a week, and today’s is particularly lengthy, so gotta get going on that. Further, each week includes one oral & one written (kanji) quiz weekly and written assignments every other day. By the time this semester concludes, we are expected to have about 200 kanji memorized, along w/retaining the nearly 100 characters for the 2 phonetic alphabets we're supposed to already know (I skipped 101, so had some cramming to do...). Blogging would not be complete without including the fact of this class in my journal entries for the semester....the hours spent in memorizing and writing take anywhere from 15-40 hours out of every week. I’m hopefully going to retain some of this, but, quite frankly, have found it difficult to really concentrate on anything else. There is an upside, however: the language is coming back! Old vocabulary words pop into my mind regularly and the demands of the curriculum are proving my gray matter isn't total mush--yet.

Gideon doesn't know he's scary

My big pooch, Gideon, turned 11 this May and still LOVES kids! With his shaggy layers of fur, it's impossible not to love him back!

Naturally obsessed with trees!

"Silhouettes of tree limbs black as darkest night,
celebrate the glory of dawn’s effulgent light.
Black lace adorns both hill and dale to weave an ethereal pattern, etched in sharp contrast across kaleidoscopic hues of heaven."
-written in Winter 2005
-birch trees painted 2009

Growing up in rural Maryland, where my nearest neighbors were a mile away, I was surrounded by woodlands, pastures, streams, wildflowers and animals. I've never understood how people can NOT find awe in the beauty of nature. I echo Wordsworth's sentiments in that nature inspired awe and reverence in me as a child, it does so now, and I'd rather die than stop feeling that way.


"Huge snowflakes captured atop pedestals of slender, pale green stems,
Queen Anne’s Lace sways softly in the balmy Summer breeze."-written in Summer, 2008

"Heaven nestles in the heart of every flower."-Written in 2005, rose photo by my brother, David