Creating a still life painting, Joan Potter assembles the ordinary objects in such a way that when painted on canvas the composition emerges as a symphony of form and color. Layering texture and design, she achieves harmony and fluid movement in a composition before she ever begins to paint. Masterfully, Potter creates a visual feast balancing illumination, spatial relationships and tactile sensation.

Educated at Massachusetts College of Art, Potter found herself disinterested in the abstract movement that dominated the late 1950's. It was not until 1969, after living and traveling through Asia and the Middle East and working in fashion illustration that she returned to fine art. She enrolled at the Art Students League in New York and found to her delight that realism was making a resurgence.

Studying under the late Richard Phillips and David A. Leffel, she was influenced by the 17th century Dutch school. She draws on their use of light to create mystery and identifies with their instinctive use of a strong focal point for directed perspective. Unquestionably, Potter's work, like that of the Dutch masters, is realistic - meticulously defined - but rendered with a loose application of paint and painterly brushwork.

Since 1984, Potter has made Santa Fe her home. She lives and works in a rustic, rambling adobe built in the early 1920's by Gerald Cassidy. The interior melds old and new, much as her paintings do, and in the studio a 12-by-12-foot atelier window catches the warmth of the crisp, northern New Mexico. This steady north light throws a constant glow onto the porcelain bowls and copper vessels she paints, creating a quiet, tonal beauty that seduces the eyes.

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