Picture of the famous Oil Painter Joann ReaBiography of Joann Rea

Joann Rea has been capturing the nuances of nature and the environment on canvas for over 35 years and describes her style of painting as a mixture of Realism and Impressionism.  Her work captures the nuances of light that filters through the canopy of a forest or the dense lushness of an azalea in full bloom.  She gives this light a force of its own, a strength that emerges from her many brushstrokes and the patterns these brushstrokes form.

A look at Rea's paintings gives the viewer an opportunity to be immersed into the brightness of a summer afternoon or into the cool morning mist of a stream in the forest.  Her scenes are familiar to those who have felt the serenity or exhilaration that remains after a day in a garden or forest.

Her history

Rea's work has been shown at the Southwest Gallery in Dallas, Texas; Kruckmeyer and Cohn Gallery in Evansville, Indiana; the Jan Maree and Avondale Galleries in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; the Fisher Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Sargent's Fine Art in Maui, Hawaii; the Main Street and Middleton Galleries in Annapolis, Maryland; and The Prince Royal Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia.  Her most recent show in 2005 was a fundraiser for The Potomac Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy in which a portion of the proceeds was donated to their respective causes.

Rea's first solo exhibition was at Missouri's historic Winston Churchill Memorial in 1986.  Since then, Rea has participated in group shows at the Dyansen Galleries in San Diego, Boston and New York.  Solo exhibitions include the Dyansen Galleries in Waikoloa, Hawaii; Arlington, Virginia; and Boston, Massachusetts.  Rea participated in an art festival in the prestigious Harajuki section of Tokyo, Japan, also through the Dyansen Gallery of New York.  Park West Galleries in Southfield, Michigan held a one-woman exhibition and published her work in four serigraphic editions.

It is a tribute to the collectibility of Rea's paintings that they have been added to private collections around the world, including Austria, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Saudi Arabia and Thailand.