Orange Glow
(a visual tribute to Riverside, California,)
A city of Past, Present and Future:

Riverside.
Your Past is a community
Grown from fragrant orange trees,
Snow-crowned mountains,
Iconic Mount Rubidoux.

Riverside.
Your Present is buildings
That thrust into the air,
Mysterious Mission Inn,
Glassed Hall of Records,
Adobe-arched City Hall,
Mythical Fox,
Beaux Artes Courthouse,
University Carillon spire.

Riverside.
Your Future: the sky-borne palm trees,
The graceful curves of a flowing Interchange,
The community of far-seeing people.

 Joanna Mersereau, 2/7/2006

Joanna Mersereau is a contemporary painter whose passion for life is expressed in her vivid colors in watercolor.

Trained as a graphic artist, Joanna was employed by the Press-Enterprise in Riverside for ten years, and the Riverside County Schools as staff artist for 21 years.

Traveling to a colonial town in Mexico for twenty years, Joanna found dignity in the Maya who live there with the same culture and dress that they have kept for more than 500 years. Her series of 200 paintings, "Patterns of the Maya," was featured in American Artist Magazine. She continued her travels, painting series depicting the Maya in Guatemala, the land and seascapes in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

She became interested in the California Missions and pursued the quest by visiting them, as well as researching Father Junípero Serra¹s home in Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain. This resulted in 20 paintings and a video which were showcased in an exhibit, "California Missions: Promise and Present, and to the writing of her book, "Coyote and the Gods of Wood," a historical novel based on the events of the founding of the Missions from 1769 to 1774.

She is represented in the Riverside Art Museum, Redlands Art Association, and by an agency in Michigan. Her paintings are in collections in the United States, Sweden, England, and Denmark. Joanna is a founding member of Watercolor West, and recently had two paintings in The Collected Best of Watercolors by Rockport Press. She is a juried member of the National League of American Pen Women in the Art category.

Joanna has her studio at 6534 Mount Diablo, Riverside. For more information, contact her at (951)787-0847.

Artist Picture by: Michael J. Elderman
Orange Picture by: Carla Conti Bender