Joanne Freeman

Abstract painter Joanne Freeman's paintings are grounded in architecture, design, popular culture and art history. Her reductive compositions and pure color recall the low-tech graphics of mid-century media and allude to the color field painters of the same period. Freeman's work utilizes tape to mask out shapes and create hard edge stencil-like forms. Freeman’s multicolored paintings and drawings are made with saturated color stained onto linen and with gouache applied to handmade paper.  The simplicity of Freeman's colors and shapes demonstrate an intuitive understanding of the two-dimensional nature of painting and a keen awareness of the interplay of negative and positive space.

Joanne Freeman received a BS in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin and a MA in Studio Art from New York University. She serves as the Vice President of American Abstract Artists, founded in 1936 and based in New York City. She is the 2024 recipient of the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting, and the 2021 recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. She has been a visiting artist at New York University, The New School for Social Research, The New York Studio School, Massachusetts College of Art, Chautauqua School of Art, The Marie Sharpe Foundation and the Rome Art Program. Freeman lives and works in New York City.