Brian Joiner is a native Cincinnatian who began drawing before he could even walk. He earned a five-year Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1985, where he majored in painting and minored in drawing. His work-study program included two years of assistant teaching at the Cleveland Museum of Art, while doing a variety of freelance work around the City of Cleveland. In 1989, a brief trip to London and Paris heightened his awareness of new ideas and artistic opportunities.

Brian took a ten-year leave of absence from painting
in order to find out what he really wanted out of life, only to discover that there is nothing in this world
that he is better suited for than creating artwork. He left his job of 11 years at Ethicon Endo-Surgery in 1997 to pursue his art career and have not looked back. Brian is still doing it full-time, evolving toward newer forms of expression and discovery.

His life has been a life of extremes and he is driven by a need to express those polarities in his work by constantly exploring new ideas to enhance the intensity of the visual experience. Brian puts an emphasis on the creative process, which is very calculated from its inception in dealing with the spatial dynamics of surface juxtapositioning.

The current work is an investigation of visual metaphors to explain or document current events on a universal level. Many of the pieces can be read on many different levels because it is the intent of the artist to address politics, sex, religion, terrorism and racism all at once, particularly in the Christ/Dracula Series.

The Middle Passage Series is an attempt to convey how history tends to repeat itself when it comes to the atrocities, brutalities, degradation and human tragedy associated in diabolical acts of terrorism, whether brief outbursts or long-term calculated plans of destruction. We need to continually study our past to understand current events and determine where we fit in this scheme of things. This series is a comparative analysis relating historical events with current events, revealing the irony and dark sense of humor father time has on humanity.