Joan Pereira at Cobalt Gallery. Photo by Howard Karren, Wicked Local (2017)
Joan Pereira: Former Artist-in-Residence at the Highland House Museum
This exhibition includes paintings in the Truro Historical Society’s collection as well as some on loan.
Joan Pereira came to the Outer Cape to study art in 1955, immersing herself in the art community here. Her teachers included Philip Malicoat, Henry Hensche, Edwin Dickinson, Jim Forsberg, and Bruce McKain. She was the only woman member of the Provincetown Group Gallery, founded in 1964, and a charter member of the Fine Arts Work Center in 1968.
Joan’s work showed a deep appreciation for light, color, and the changing seasons, telling her daughter: “Each season produces its unique Cape Cod light, unlike any other in the world.” Joan taught art at Castle Hill Center for the Arts, the Cape Cod Conservatory, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the Highland House Museum.
In the 1970s, she won a scholarship to study painting in the south of France. Her work was collected in Provincetown and throughout the country. She had a one-woman show at the Cape Cod Conservatory, the Community Art Center of Boston, and the Kornbluth Gallery in New Jersey. Her final show was in
Provincetown at the Kobalt Gallery in 2018 when she was 91.
Joan died on December 29, 2021, at 94.