Joan Gillchrest’s distinctive paintings are associated with the Cornish village of Mousehole, where she lived and worked. Her colourful and poetic paintings of Mousehole harbor with its busy locals and visitors, of views across Mount's Bay to St Michael's Mount, and of Penwith’s tin-mines and coves, are part of strong Cornish tradition of naïve, primitive or outsider art.
Joan was born in London in 1918. In 1935 she enrolled at the Grosvenor School of Art, and went on to exhibit at the at Royal Academy, and the New English Art Club. In 1958 she moved to Mousehole, Cornwall.________________________________________