Joanna Bourne studied Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where she discovered a love of printmaking. She became a member of Charlotte Press in Newcastle in the late 1980s, exhibiting widely and experimenting with a variety of print techniques.
Much of Joanna Bourne's inspiration for her prints comes from her local area of Newcastle with its town moor and parks and her allotment and garden. She is interested in the places where urban life and the natural world meet, and her images convey the impressions of a given moment in time, a scene glimpsed which has resonated with her, initially working from drawings, photographs and memory. She responds in particular to the atmospheric incarnations of ‘northern’ weather – wind, snow and rain, and the changing times of the year.