Conversation With Joan Wye

        Joan is an accomplished painter and sculptor who has been encouraged to express her artistic gifts since she was a little girl. She has had a unique perspective on life around her, which has infused her work with passion and confidence.

        Joan was born in New Jersey of German immigrant parents and sent back to Berlin at age 2 to live with relatives when her parents divorced. Joan recalls making a picture with black, red, and yellow when she was 3 or 4 years old and feeling very fascinated by the colors.

        As a young girl Joan traveled back and forth between the US and Germany numerous times. First grade was spent with her mother in Hollywood, California. When Joan returned to Germany she says Mickey Mouse was on everything she had, “my watch, my clothes, everything, even my bloomers!” While part of her felt the pull to be American, she says she was totally accepted and belonged in Germany. Her artistic talent and connections to America made her a big deal with her friends. Her family supported her interest in art, her uncles often drew with her.

        As World War II began breaking out in Germany Joan noticed that many of her Jewish classmates started disappearing, “some were leaving the country, some the Gestapo picked up.” Joan’s father was Jewish and he, his family and Joan left Germany. (Joan had been living with her mother’s Lutheran family.) She was willing to get out because her relatives assured her the war would end soon and she'd be back. She never lived there again. At 13, Joan was sent to a boarding school in New York for two years before joining her mother and stepfather in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

        Joan believes that while her family supported her art she feels it also helped her relate to people. Being separated from her parents, she says, “helped me deal with my life (on my own terms) instead of having my parents deal with my life. I was busy, good, responsible.”

        By high school, Joan began to receive acclaim outside her family. “There was a poster contest with four prizes and I entered. You weren't supposed to put your name on them. I tried to make 4 different styles...I won 1st prize, 2nd prize, 3rd prize, and 4th prize.” It only solidified her belief that her pursuit of art was right and good for her: “Things happened because of the weirdness of it all! It was fabulous to create that kind of scene – made me confident, not afraid of my art being a little strange.” While her mother recognized her talent, she steered Joan into commercial art and fashion design.

        After high school Joan put her foot down and announced to her family she would only pursue fine art. “They were appalled. They thought I should get married, have family, never paint again." Although Joan did get married to another artist and had two children, she continued to paint.

        Joan put herself through school at the Art Students League in New York. The valuable experience permitted her to learn what she wanted and she found she loved the “anxiety, anger, and ecstasy of being young in New York City.”

        Joan and her family moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1953. She worked as a house painter, in restaurants, odd jobs and painted in her spare time at home. She had art shows throughout her 19 years there and was seen as a local artist, which she felt was nurturing, despite the frustration of not having a studio.

        She was part of the Provincetown art community comprised of many well-known artists. Some of the artist were from Europe, with whom she could speak German. She could relate to the Europeans and socialized with Karl Knath, Jack Tworkov, and Hans Hoffman, all of whom backed her application for a Guggenheim grant. “If you wanted a name you had to go to New York. But, they really couldn't help me because I was a woman. It was impossible. They gave me good feedback and helped in every way but politically. There was no Feminism then, no nothing. You were just out there. No matter how much they liked your work they couldn't help you.”


       Joan moved to Boston, eventually summered in Maine where she started a tile business and took up mosaics. She and Gregory Jackson together worked in the tile business and pursued their art. In 1990 they

decided to move to an island one hour and fifteen minute ferry ride off the coast of Maine.

        Joan notes that with her German accent, outside of Germany of course, she was always asked where she was from. “Americans really are asking where were you born….what am I supposed to say--New Jersey?!” She rethought the question in terms of ‘who are my ancestors?' “ That became more important than who you are.” Her maternal grandfather’s family was very imbedded in their ancestry of Bohemians, Saxons, Mongolians, Turks, and Tartars. Joan describes her ancestors as farmers, shoemakers, and miners among others, who lived in poverty and spent their lives in “excruciating ways of making a living. Survival was the thing.” Joan observes wryly that European fairy tales where children get eaten by witches and so forth was hardly a myth: “Life was so bad, one imagined unconsciously trying to get rid of the children, or other people taking the kids because of hunger.” The family still spoke of fleeing the Turks during the Ottoman Empire. Impoverished peasants lived very harsh lives in the in the forest and did so for centuries which is reflected in aspects of their culture. It’s “part of the reason Germans are known to be nasty or cold, or especially hard on children.” And yet, they can be very connected to nature because of their relationship with the forest. Joan believes this ancient history was just as much part of her parent’s psyche in how Joan was raised.

       Joan sees the prevalence of nature, particularly trees in her work, as a legacy of her Bohemian ancestry. Her confident use of color seems to be a connection to her time in South America. She reminisces about being a caddy for her stepfather who golfed on a course on the edge of the jungle, “I just saw the most amazing flowers, the smells and colors were incredible.”

        When I sat down with Joan to talk in 2005 she told me “it feels like things are really coming together”.   Sadly, in May of 2006, Joan succumbed to a 6 year fight with cancer.  She had painted with vigor through out this experience and joked with friends that she would paint with her teeth if she had to!  The passion for her art and love of life can be clearly seen in her art.  The gallery will continue to show her work.