Name/Title
Joan Gill- Circle RoundDescription
Thanks to AWE, “Joan started becoming an artist at the age of 91,” says her son Tom. She’s living proof that it’s never too late.
Joan worked in New York, where she was born in 1926, as an interior decorator for one of the nation’s first big department stores, Lloyd and Taylor, but she devoted most of her life to care giving. She raised four children, cared for her mother and later for her husband in memory care. But she always made time to care for others too. When living in North Carolina, she delivered puzzles to people in nursing homes. As Tom points out, “She did things throughout her life that the world doesn’t celebrate.”
Joan and her husband, an IBM executive who travelled extensively, lived in Europe for a number of years and enjoyed golfing together. But her passion throughout her life was always flowers. She cared for a large rose garden, where she would sometimes appear in white heels, one of the many pairs of shoes she loved. Long-stemmed roses were her favorite, which became the subject of some of her earlier paintings.
You can find her three times a week in Reutlinger’s art room, expressing in her art what she may not be able to say in words. She likes it when “all the shapes are getting along.”
