🌿 JOAN IRVING BRANDT on her birthday 🌿

Remembering the flowers 
& friendship of
Joan Irving Brandt, artist &
helpful summer resident 
of Shaw Island.

"Butterflies 

and poppies 

belong to each other.

The flower's petals

are as translucent as wings.

I really feel that they would fly away too, 
if they were not tethered by their stems."

Joan Irving Brandt

Joan's career in watercolor got off to an early start with the purchase of one of her works by the prestigious Metropolitan Museum. At that time she was the youngest American painter to be so honored. Over the subsequent years she lectured, taught and juried from Hawaii to Italy. But she is best known for her observant genre subjects found in the United States and especially the American West Coast. 
      The American Watercolor Society voted Joan an Honorary Life Member. She is cited as an important force in the mid-century revival of watercolor as a major American art form.
Excerpts from a commemorative talk by friend and art collector Gene Crain on the Patio at Blue Sky, 2 December 1995.
      "Happiness is too often confused with acquiring things. Awareness is self-rewarding in that it leads on to appreciate without desiring." Joan.1949.
      The watercolor in this post is the cover of a 16 page booklet archived in the Gatehouse collection of Shaw Island history, courtesy of long time islander, Marlyn Hoffman. Joan's artist husband, Rex Brandt, inscribed: "Joan thought an extra lot of Shaw Island people."
      Hanging at the Shaw Island Community Building there is a Joan Irving Brandt watercolor of the islanders on South Beach, celebrating the launching of the John Alden cutter, JOHANNA, 27 May 1987. Thank you Joan.