Joan Fabian

Visual Arts : Mixed Media Artist , Painter

Joan Fabian is an abstract painter and mixed media artist who received her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA at UTSA. She has had a Fulbright to Pakistan and two artist residencies in the Netherlands. She received a Pollock/Krasner Artist Award and a Puffin Foundation Grant. Her work has been shown throughout the world in such places as Parsons School of Design in Paris and the Smithsonian International in Washington, D.C. Joan’s work is located in the new San Antonio City Tower entitled “The Vibrant Village”.

Artist Style: Visual Art : Abstract

Artist Statement of Work

Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):

Why I came to making the art I do comes from a life long search for the healing connection of
family and individual growth. I work intuitively, seeking to allow free association be my guide. I
am concerned with how things work and how they relate to the human mind. Where I live and
have lived give important testimony to my identity, formulating a culture and a past. Upon this
past is the step that determines the future. The past never leaves and after making many
marks, the marks I make are the products of experience. Memory is a system, a custom made
circuit board.
How a person lives are choices made but predetermined by place culture and ancestory. One
can visit and live for a time in another culture, absorbing the physical surroundings and how
the environment places restrictions or freedom upon the individual to live a healthy life.
My art allows me to access and process information and filter it through a visual vocabulary
involving abstraction and allowing the viewer the means for self discovery.