Joanne Schembri was born in Malta in 1971. She studied design, painting and sculpture at the Malta School of Arts from 1992 to 1997, where she has obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts. Since 1992 her works were chosen to be exhibited in major collective exhibitions in Malta and abroad amongst which are Bath - UK, Syros - Greece, Sarasota - Florida, Adenau and Bonn - Germany, Australia and recently Holland. She has also set up three solo art exhibitions from 1996 to 2000, two held at The National Museum of Fine Arts Valletta and one at Galleria Fgura. She received a commendation for the Autumn 1995 Front Page Competition organized by Daler Rowney. In 1996 she won a prize for originality in a competition organized by Faber-Castell and another prize for the logo competition organized by the Ministry for Youth, Sport, Culture and the Arts in 1997. In 1998 her works where chosen to adorn the covers of school poetry text books. In 1999 one of her paintings was chosen in a Dutch worldwide millennium competition called "1001 Ways to Love the Earth" and was exhibited in Holland in 2005. Joanne’s work tells us in no uncertain terms that there is still imagination in the minds of those who seek it. In her earlier artistic phase she looked for starting points on chance effects and coaxed them into recognizable forms that displayed a surrealistic story line. The alchemy that emerges, when she plays with paint on a surface, is astounding. She discovered in paint formation images of strange places, habitations of marvellous creatures. Sometimes it turns into the lushest vegetation with surreal creatures filling every nook and cranny. In the phase which followed, the strange creatures running rampant across strange places or cavorting in bizarre dance routines, have vanished and open spaces and strange climates have taken their place. Joanne, like an alchemist, magically transforms base paint into richly evocative statements. Her statements are transubstantiations of paint. In her hands, the medium dreams. It conjures up moods ranging from that of raging fires to that of icy regions. Her realizations happen through her investigation, her documentation, her experimentation, her aesthetic awareness and her effective response. She is currently experimenting with colour, forms and shapes and different texture. Amongst the mediums, which she is using to communicate and express her emotions, are oils, acrylics, spray paint, foil and pieces of fabric.