Joanna Paul
| Joanna Margaret Paul | |
|---|---|
| Born |
14 December 1945 Hamilton, New Zealand |
| Died | 29 May 2003 (aged 57) Rotorua, New Zealand |
| Education | Elam School of Fine Arts |
| Known for | Painting, poetry, film |
Joanna Margaret Paul (14 December 1945 – 29 May 2003) was a New Zealand visual artist, poet and film-maker.
Paul was one of four daughters of pioneering New Zealand publisher Blackwood Paul and artist and writer Janet Paul.
Paul attended Marsden College from 1959 until 1962, then Waikato University in 1963, studying History, French and English. In 1964 she travelled to London with her family for a year, studying at the Sir John Cass School. On returning to New Zealand she completed a BA at Auckland University in 1968; in 1967 she enrolled at Elam School of Fine Arts, studying under teachers such as Colin McCahon, Greer Twiss and Tom Hutchins, and alongside fellow students Christine Hellyar, Marte Szirmay and Leon Narbey. She graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts in 1969.
After graduating from Elam Paul moved to Dunedin, where in 1971 she married fellow artist Jeffrey Harris. In 1973 Paul and Harris spent a year in Wellington, where their first daughter was born; in 1976 a second daughter was born, who died of a heart defect at the age of eight months. A son was born in 1978 and a fourth child in 1982. Art historian Jill Trevelyan notes that 'Although Paul faced practical difficulties in reconciling the roles of mother and artist, she refused to see them as mutually exclusive. ... Paul was able to turn her domestic situation to her own advantage in her art, as her many tender and exquisite studies of her children attest.' Paul's first solo exhibition was held in 1968. In 1975 she was included in the exhibition Six Women Artists in Christchurch. In the publication accompanying the exhibition she stated:
As a woman painting is not a job, not even a vocation. It is a part of life, subject to the strains, and joys, of domestic life. ... Painting for me as a woman is an ordinary act - about the great meaning in ordinary things.
In 1983 Paul received the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago. The following year, after the end of her marriage, she moved briefly to Wellington and then settled in Whanganui, where she lived for the rest of her life, not discounting time spent working in various New Zealand cities, including a year in Wellington when she held the Rita Angus Residency in 1993.
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