We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful JOYCE ERB. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with JOYCE below.
Alright, JOYCE thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
Exploring my adoptive hometown of Charleston on canvas has become an incredibly rewarding and ongoing project since I moved here from up North ten years ago. Downtown Charleston is a small compact city, but the Lowcountry that surrounds and gives context to the historic peninsula is sprawling and beautiful in a different way.
Before relocating, I admired Charleston like any tourist might, enchanted by the charm of the old downtown and glimpses of marshes from the highway. But truly seeing these places meant venturing deeper: squeezing into narrow streets to find a sliver of sidewalk for my easel, or trekking into marshes filled with the scent of pluff mud and swarms of South Carolina’s “state birds” (the mosquitos). I need to paint these spots, one by one, to know them.
This process goes beyond capturing bricks and mortar, or water and weeds. It becomes almost spiritual. Painting on site, en plein air, I feel a connection to those who lived, worked, celebrated, and suffered here. When a horse-drawn carriage rolls by, it sends my imagination time-traveling to the old waterfront just a block away, once bustling with colonial exports and the grim reality of human cargo. Painting a grand home South of Broad, with the sun so hot it melts the glue on my sandals, I picture the lavish parties of antebellum planters. When I paint a slave cabin on a plantation, I can feel the presence of a Gullah mother who had more children than she could feed from her sharecropping. As I stood in the heat, coping with the oppressive humidity, the bugs and the anxiety of what other creatures might emerge from the marsh, I pondered how any human ever survived these conditions for more than a few hours.
My “project” of getting to know this new place wouldn’t be complete without recognizing the modern-day people of Charleston who engage and inspire me, whether it’s a hip-hop dancer drumming his own beat, a couple at a local watering hole, or a vibrant street festival crowd. Just like the architecture and the landscapes, these people captivate my brush.
Through this work, I’ve forged a spiritual connection, not only with the past, but with the people who see and experience my art today, and those who will in the future.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was one of those people who say they can’t draw a stick figure. I never had more than a passing interest in art until adulthood. In my first job out of college, I was thrilled to be sent to Switzerland for my first trip abroad. I was disappointed to find that examining accountants’ workpapers in the basement of a worldwide headquarters for a massive litigation is next-level soul sucking.
Then came Paris.
My coworker talked me into spending one last weekend overseas, in Paris.
At the Musée de l’Orangerie, I encountered Monet’s Water Lilies in a curved room wrapped entirely in massive canvases. Wow wow wow! I was thunderstruck, and felt the power of that art in my heart. The next day at the Musée d’Orsay, I felt wave after wave of awe as I stood in front of French Impressionist masterpieces. Still, at that time, and for years after, I couldn’t imagine creating art that would move anyone else.
That trip changed my life, but I wouldn’t know it for years.
By my early thirties, I had a big job as a lawyer, a new house in Connecticut, a long commute to my office in downtown Manhattan, and a little boy. I was barely juggling the job, travel, motherhood, managing a nanny at home and an assistant in the office when I got a bad diagnosis out of the blue: breast cancer.
Less than a year later, our son was diagnosed with what was then called Asperger’s Syndrome. I took the Connecticut bar, got a job closer to home, but even then, the cost to my family of my continued work was high. Live-in help proved impossible to keep, exacerbating the issue.
A life-threatening illness has a way of clarifying the mind. I didn’t know what course my disease would take, but I did know that if my time was short, I wanted to spend it raising my boy. I was incredibly fortunate that my treatments were a success, that my husband was supportive, and that we were able to get by on his salary. Eventually, I was given the all-clear to have another child. Despite doctors’ predictions, she, too, was later diagnosed with autism.
During my time as a stay-at-home mom, I would occasionally get into New York to see a museum on the weekends. When my husband’s job took us to New Jersey, I didn’t even consider taking the bar again, but we were now just 30 minutes from Manhattan by train. That proximity became my saving grace.
The museums became an escape from the chaos of doctors, consultants, and navigating services for my children. I found passion not only in the art itself, but in the stories of the artists I admired. I frequented the Met, where I saw shows on Manet, Picasso, Sargent, and more; traveled to Boston’s MFA and Isabella Gardner, Cleveland’s museum during a medical trip, and the Clark Art Institute in the Berkshires after dropping my son at camp. Every museum visit added a layer to a growing foundation, an accidental art education through osmosis.
Whenever I visited a museum, I invariably came home with a thick book or catalogue. I would take them to bed and read them aimlessly, the same way I might read some fancy Julia Child recipe that I never intended to cook. Eventually, that knowledge sought an outlet at the end of my brush.
One night toward the end of our time in New Jersey, I asked my husband to come home early so I could take a Thai cooking class. It was full. Just to get out of the house, I signed up for “Oil Painting 101” instead. I wasn’t an instant success, but I had fun.
When we moved to Charleston in 2014, one of my goals was to learn to paint. The marshes, beaches, flowers, and historic architecture inspired me. I found a gifted teacher and a warm community of fellow painters. Together, we’ve traveled to paint in Maine, Florida, Mexico, and Italy. Painting outdoors, on Charleston’s streets or in the landscape, became one of my favorite social activities.
Now, as many of my law school peers begin to retire, I can’t wait to get up every morning and get to work on my art. Recently, a large space became available for my studio when my brilliant adult children moved out to live their neurodivergent lives independently. With a new studio and an empty nest, I feel like I am just getting started with my career! It’s not the same career I started out with, but I am grateful for every day I get to pick up a brush and see where this adventure takes me next.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
People often ask me where I find inspiration. Though I’ve painted in some incredible places, I’ve come to believe that inspiration is everywhere.
I like to think of it like fireflies. Did you love chasing fireflies as a child? I remember waiting for that moment at dusk when one, then dozens, of tiny lights blinked out of the dark. You never saw them arrive—it just happened.
Inspiration is like that. It’s always there, but you have to be watching for it to appear. If you can catch a tiny bit of inspirational light, you must hold onto it long enough to act on it. If you chase another while still clinging to the first, you’ll likely lose both.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
For a long time, I thought a “good” painting had no mistakes. The more carefully I planned and tried to be correct, the stiffer and more lifeless my paintings became.
I spent years learning how to let go of my perfectionism, and celebrate my personal style. The wobbly line, the brush that skips, the uneven pigment, all these quirks are what make my paintings uniquely mine. It wasn’t until I saw similar traits in the works of artists I admire that I gave myself permission to loosen up.
The real trick now is knowing which imperfections to keep. One of these days, I may go through the stack of paintings I once deemed “not good enough” to see if I can rescue one that is perfectly imperfect.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.joyceerb.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erbjp_art/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joyceerbfineart/
