Joan Wulf is a painter and mixed media artist who explores the nexus of nature and science. Her practice focuses on the inner workings of the natural world, its underlying cycles, and our connection to it. Over the last two decades Wulf has shifted away from paint as a medium to render natural phenomena, focusing instead on the natural materials as a medium of their own. These materials range from natural elements—wood, fabric, fire, foraged plant matter—to objects found in her studio—repurposed journals, canvases, even old bank statements. Subject becomes agent, studio materials transform into collaborators, as she burns, soaks, rips, folds in her quest to distill each material to its most basic state. Wulf then reconstructs these distillations, grouping, stacking and developing patterns in a mode that bridges collage and catalogue. She understands herself as a record keeper, mapping out momentary transformations and eternal cycles, charting the process of destruction, metamorphosis, and rebirth. Through her focus on material transformation, she hopes to inspire a connection to the physical, natural world, and to provoke a curiosity of its inner workings and our placement in it.

Wulf holds a BS from UC Davis and a BFA and MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at Themes+Projects Gallery in San Francisco, Jose Drudis-Biada Gallery and Quotidian Gallery in Los Angeles, UCRARTS: Museum of Art in Riverside, California, and  Villa Di Donato in Naples, Italy. Her work can be found in many public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe.