Joan Smalley is a lifelong resident of Virginia. Her earliest memories involve making art, since her mother and grandmother were both artists. She was encouraged to pursue art as a career and after graduating from high school in rural Cumberland County, attended the College of William and Mary. There she studied painting with Thomas Thorne and etching with master printmaker, Paul Helfrich. Joan’s love of etching and lithography led her to enter an exchange program offered by William and Mary to study printmaking in England for a semester. It was this experience that began her love of creating art based on the natural world. After graduation, Joan began a career in gallery management. This evolved into a twenty-five year career in selling art and framing to galleries. Creating art has taken a “back seat” to earning a living for most of this time. In 2002, Joan began painting on a regular basis in her home studio, and has begun showing and selling her own work in galleries on the East Coast.