About the Deck Creator

Joanna Powell Colbert is an artist and writer known internationally for her Goddess portraits and mythic art. Her artwork and writing appears often in the magazines SageWoman and PanGaia as well as many other alternative publications. Amber Lotus Publishers call her one of “the most accomplished and well-loved artists in the Goddess-spirit community.”

Joanna has taught classes on the Goddess, Tarot and earth-centered spirituality in the Northwest since 1991. In the early 1990's, she helped revive The Beltane Papers: A Journal of Women’s  Mysteries, and served as its managing editor for four years, co-creating the magazine with Helen Farias, Waverly Fitzgerald and a wildly creative collective of women. She has read the cards professionally for over twenty years.  She is the founder of the Bellingham-area Circle of Stella Maris and is an ordained priestess through the international Fellowship of Isis. She is also a priestess-initiate of the Sisterhood of the Silver Branch in Santa Cruz, California.

The Gaian Tarot combines Joanna’s love of symbolic, archetypal art with the mysteries of the natural world. The deck has received rave reviews in Tarot and earth-spirituality publications around the world. It is featured in US Games' Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume 4. The collector's item, Majors-Only deck sold out its first edition before it was released. The entire deck and book will be completed by Spring 2008. Joanna's artwork is regularly shown at Tarot festivals and conferences around the country, including the World Tarot Congress in Chicago. Recently she has participated in the Tarot School's Readers Studio in New York, BATS (Bay Area Tarot Symposium) in San Francisco, LATS (Los Angeles Tarot Symposium), WATTS (Wisconsin Area Tri-State Tarot Symposium) and "The Art of the Tarot" gallery show in Seattle. She has also contributed to the popular podcast TarotConnection.net.

Joanna lives on a small island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, musician Craig Olson, where daily encounters with the mysteries of the natural world continue to inspire and inform her work. They live in a straw bale house they built themselves, which they call Heron House.