Jill Joy - Biography

Jill Joy’s art is inspiration based. Through meditative awareness, images emerge in her mind’s eye that reflect the state or evolution of her consciousness. The creation of these paintings is a spiritual experience and her work creates a sense of active peace in the viewer, much like meditation itself.

Jill likens universal consciousness to the sky - an infinite backdrop across which the clouds of emotion and thought come and go. The process of spiritual development includes clearing obstructions from this field of love. Her work reflects this philosophy. She creates luminous, abstract oil paintings that live with the light, changing like the sky changes as the sun makes its daily passage from dawn to dusk.

There are elements of abstract expressionism, surrealism and minimalism in her work culminating in a dynamic yet peaceful visual experience. In viewing Jill’s work one gets the sense of the soul’s energetic movement and development through space, time and the atmosphere. She has been strongly influenced by eastern mysticism. Artistically her influences include Rothko, Turner, the New York Abstract Expressionists and Magritte.

While primarily self taught, Jill studied at the Art Students League in NYC and was mentored by Grace Knowlton, the renowned painter and sculptor. She also took photography classes at the Museum School in Boston with Siegfried Halus.

Jill’s work has been shown in galleries in New York, Florida, Texas and California including the eponymous Jill Joy Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. She has won numerous awards and residencies and her paintings are in private collections across the United States and Europe.

She attended Tufts University. After a brief stint in a corporate law firm in NYC that offered to pay her way through law school, she renounced the idea of becoming a lawyer and decided to pursue her passion, art. She then worked at the McKee Gallery in Manhattan where she became assistant director and discovered her true calling was to be an artist.