Joy Wolfenden-Brown

Joy spent her early career working as an Art Therapist, having gained a Fine Art Degree from Bretton Hall, Leeds University in 1984 and a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Therapy at The Hertfordshire College of Art and Design in 1986.

She returned to painting whilst raising her family at her home in Cornwall and has been represented by Anima Mundi Gallery, St Ives (formerly Millennium Gallery) since 2004. She was also represented by Beaux Arts Bath from 2009-2019.

Since 2003 she has had 20 solo exhibitions and been involved in numerous mixed exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her paintings have been selected for various Open Exhibitions and have been included in exhibitions at The Royal West of England Academy on several occasions. Works were acquired by The Anthony Petullo Outsider Collection, Milwaukee and further works held in collections worldwide. Her painting ‘Loss’ was used for front cover of the RAIJ album ‘The Dream We Carry’ in 2024.
Joy was First Prize Winner at the NOAC in 2012. She was also awarded The Somerville Painting Prize 2003, was First Prize Winner at The Sherborne Open 2007, won The Evolver Prize at the RWA Open 2019 and Judges Choice Award at The Chaiya Art Award in 2023.

Of her painting process, Joy says,
‘Each painting starts at a point of not knowing, not thinking.
It seems, these days, that to start the process is to open the doors to chaos! Then the almost compulsive repetition of the placement and replacement of the figure within her environment ensues…… If you were to watch me you might find it quite a joke, as I sit silently, ‘half-hearing’, dithering, piecing fragments together, heaving large paintings around a tiny space. All in order to make a stammering start. Painting and overpainting until the figure settles into some kind of awkward stillness and I recognise something fractionally new that utters itself into the painting and my heart responds. A tiny breakthrough….and so there is this spiritual shuffle…both feeble and true. These moments or glimpses, I hesitate to speak of or give words to, in case they become something other than they are.’

Anima Mundi Gallery Director, Joseph Clarke writes,
‘Joy Wolfenden-Brown’s intimate oil paintings feel hauntingly familiar, possessing a raw emotional honesty. She captures fleeting fragments of memory; moments in time where the inherent vulnerability of the figure depicted, often in isolation, is palpable. These are lovingly yet spontaneously executed reflections of the human condition, which have an unnervingly yet simultaneously comforting, unguarded quality.’