Joel Barkley was born on a small farm in Iowa in 1966 and started drawing at a very young age. Knowing he wanted to be an artist he began practicing his craft daily and has never stopped. With a serious passion for fantasy genre he pursued multiple disciplines including oils, acrylics, pastels and watercolors. All of his paintings and illustrations are hand drawn and painted with natural bristle brushes with no photoshop whatsoever. Practicing his art in high school he graduated when he was 17 and got a scholarship to Iowa State University. After college he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota where he has lived and worked as an artist for the last 22 years. There he apprenticed mural painting, faux finishing, and decorative painting; after which he began working professionally transforming residential and commercial interior spaces. While living in Minneapolis Joel performed for five years as a dancer and gypsy at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and helped to establish and maintain several english garden spaces around the Twin Cities.

After having gone back to school four years to study computer art with a focus on the Adobe CS4 Creative Suite he now utilizes CS4 Photoshop and After Effects to create vivid animations and special effects for video and film compositing projects. His diverse portfolio includes graphic design, photography, animation, video compositing, film editing, installations and costuming.

He is also working as a member of the House Management staff at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis while also keeping busy on independent film projects. He is currently studying japanese and advanced transcendental meditation.