Joan Smith is an artist with longstanding interests in archives, medical history, the natural world, archaeology and anthropology.

Based in Edinburgh, she is the Art Director for the Art/Science group ‘Fusion’, a member Visual Arts Scotland and a Professional Member of the Society of Scottish Artists.

Joan makes paintings, prints, drawings and objects. Her recent projects have evolved from research in the Scottish Ornithology Club,  Surgeons Hall Museum archives, the skull collection in the University of Edinburgh and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. She has also co-authored journal articles and book chapters that consider connections between art, craft, anatomy and anthropology.

'I like to consider the histories embedded in the objects and documents discovered in these collections and make work in response, finding a contemporary relevance in the material I explore and linking meaning and concept to process and medium'.