Joanna Paul

Joanna Paul studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School and University of Waikato. Training under Colin McCahon and Greer Twiss is recorded. The recorded working language is English. Work by Joanna Paul is recorded in the collections of Auckland Art Gallery, Te Whare O Rehua Sarjeant Gallery and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Distinctions recorded are Frances Hodgkins Fellowship.

• Name — Joanna Paul • Birth Name — Joanna Margaret Paul • Born — 14 December 1945 • Birthplace — Hamilton, New Zealand • Died — 29 May 2003 • Place of death — Rotorua, New Zealand • Relatives — Blackwood Paul (father) Janet Paul (mother) • Field — Painting, poetry, film • Training — Elam School of Fine Arts

Paul was one of four daughters of pioneering New Zealand publisher Blackwood Paul and artist and writer Janet Paul. Paul attended Samuel Marsden Collegiate School from 1959 until 1962, then the University of Waikato 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 Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Auckland 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 1977, she developed a project called A Season's Diaries in Wellington, which connected a number of female artists including Heather McPherson, Allie Eagle, Gladys Gurney (also known as Saj Gurney), Anna Keir, Bridie Lonie and Marian Evans. It was this project that led Marian Evans, Anna Keir and Bridie Lonie to create the Women's Gallery, which ran from 1980 till 1984, and which featured work by Paul in a number of its exhibitions. 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. The first major survey of Paul's work was shown at the Sarjeant Art Gallery in 1989. In 2003 Paul collapsed while bathing in a thermal pool in the Polynesian Spas in Rotorua. She died in hospital two days later. Jill Trevelyan writes 'An inventory of her studio revealed some 5000 artworks, many of which had never been exhibited, drawings, photographs and films. She also left a body of work as a poet and prose writer, including a wealth of published material.' Paul's obituary in the New Zealand journal Art New Zealand noted that 'she worked for love-not for money, neither for status nor fame. And so, during her public life as an artist – just on 34 years – Paul existed on the margins of the art world: where she lived, how she practised, and what she believed in.' The obituary also commented on the range of her work and interests: 'painting and drawing, photography, film-making, poetry, publishing, architectural history and critical writing, as well as related commitment to the women's movement, human rights, building preservation, environmental protection and a fierce opposition to laissez-faire genetic engineering.' Photographic historian Peter Ireland, writing on an exhibition of Paul's photographs in 2013, noted Apart from a few dedicated collectors her work was never much sought after, and for several reasons. It was usually small, often on paper and domestically related. She worked across a range of mediums – painting, drawing, photography, film, poetry, publishing – and in the market’s view that’s not versatility but a perceived lack of focus. And she was her own worst enemy in terms of promotion. Although she exhibited regularly she shied away from any promotional endeavour, and, typically perversely, seemed to actively discourage it.

• 1989 Joanna Margaret Paul: Chronicle/Chronology, Sarjeant Gallery • 1995 The Figured Landscape, City Gallery Wellington • 2004–2005 Beauty, Even, City Gallery Wellington, Sarjeant Gallery and Rotorua Museum of Art and History • 2006 Joanna Margaret Paul: Drawing, Mahara Gallery and Whangarei Art Museum • 2013 Joanna Margaret Paul: Photographs 1976–1985, Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington • 2015 Picture/Poem: imagery of Cilla McQueen & Joanna Paul, Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin • 2015 Thinking Feeling: Time-based works by Ziggy Lever and Joanna Margaret Paul, curated by Paula Booker, The Physics Room and RAMP Gallery, Hamilton, New Zealand • 2015 Lunch Poems: Kate Newby and Joanna Margaret Paul, Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland • 2017 Not Nostalgia, Bowerbank Ninow, Auckland. • 2021 Imagined in the Context of a Room, Dunedin Public Art Gallery