Originally from Summit, New Jersey, Joan M. Hellquist has lived in eight states and been to forty nine. Joan has been drawing and painting since she was very young. She earned a B.A. in Art from the University of New Hampshire. She also has an A.S. in Respiratory Therapy from Quinsigamond Community College and a B.H.S. as a Physician Assistant from Duke University. As a Respiratory Therapist and Physician Assistant, she worked mostly in Pediatrics both in hospital and clinic settings.
Joan feels a strong connection to animals, children, the natural world, Indigenous cultures, places where she knows in her heart and head that she has lived past lives and the time periods in which she lived those lives. For many years after college, Joan painted pastel portraits and landscapes. After moving to New Mexico in 1988, she traveled across the desert southwest, Alaska, and Canada, taking photographs of national park land, wilderness areas, and animals. Joan continued her landscape paintings in pastel, but after retiring from healthcare in 2001, she knew what she was meant to do. Because of her lifetime love of animals, her respect for Native American culture and spirituality, and the fact that she has been a drummer since age ten, Joan began painting wildlife images on Native American-made hand drums in 2002.
Joan’s drums have been in Kiva Fine Arts in Santa Fe 2003-2006 and the Northern New Mexico Art Catalog 2009-2011. She showed her work in the Placitas Holiday Sale in Placitas, NM from 2002 until 2020, the Placitas Studio Tour, and was a vendor at the Gathering of Nations, the largest pow wow in North America from 2004-2013.