Joe Anna Arnett graduated from the University of Texas, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She moved to New York and became a Senior Art Director for Young & Rubicam Advertising working on such accounts as Merrill Lynch and People Magazine. In New York, She continued her studies in fine arts at the Art Student's League for an additional four years.
In 1997, she became a Master Artist of the Artists of America Show at the Denver Historical Society Museum where she exhibited for 11 years. She exhibited for 14 years at the Prix de West Invitational show at The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. She was honored as a featured artist at the Gilcrease Museum’s 2006 Rendezvous exhibition and the 2012 Reunion at the museum. She has also exhibited at the Albuquerque Museum of Fine Arts, The Tucson Museum of Fine Arts, and The National Cowgirl Museum in Fort Worth, The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Cincinnati Museum Center, and Art Asia in Hong Kong.
Arnett has written articles for The Artist’s Magazine, American Arts Quarterly,ART Ideas and Australian Artists Magazine and has been featured in The International Herald Tribune, Southwest Art, Western Art Digest and the North Light books, Painting with Passion, The Best of Flower Painting, I and II, The Complete Oil Painter and Sketchbook Confidential II from North Light Publishing. She was featured in Plein Air Magazine in the April 2018 issue in an article with James Asher, “Oil and Water, A love Story.”
Arnett has been a demonstration artist for Plein Air Magazine’s Convention & Expo in 2015, an instructor in 2016 and a featured presenter at the 2018 convention in Santa Fe. She will be an instructor on faculty at the Plein Air Convention and Expo, Denver 2020.
Arnett authored the North Light Book Painting Sumptuous Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers in Oil, which was first published in 1998 and went into a second edition as well as a Chinese language edition in 1999.
Arnett was an instructor at the Scottsdale Artists School for 12 years and has taught workshops in France for Art in Provence, in Spain and France for Brush with Life, in Ecuador for Plein Air South America and private classes in Guatemala. She has also taught in England and Ireland for Art in Ireland. She has taught for Southern Vermont Art Center and for many other public and private venues in the US, including Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, California, Colorado, and Oklahoma.
Joe Anna Arnett was a master artist, one of the producers and a writer for the PBS Series, Passport & Palette.
In 2018, she was awarded, Best Outdoor Still life in Plein Air Magazine’s Salon, and Award of Merit in the Outdoor Painters Society Plein Air Southwest and a 2019 Award of Excellence in National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society small works show. She received another Award of Merit at the Outdoor Painters Society Plein Air Southwest in Galveston in 2019.
She is a Master Signature member of Plein Air Painters of New Mexico, Plein Air Artists of Colorado, a Signature member of Oil Painters of America, a Signature member of Laguna Plein Air Painters Association and a Signature member of American Impressionists Society.
Zaplin Lampert Gallery in Santa Fe, NM has represented her work for over thirty years.
