[3] She went on to study with Morris Kantor[3] at the Art Students League of New York before earning a BFA from the Pratt Institute in 1963.

[4][5] She spent seven and a half years in Spain (1963–1970), where her work, "gradually developed from broad gestural and spatially referenced painting to compositions of a somewhat surreal figure/ground composition...(her) highly saturated brilliant color separated (her) paintings from the leading Spanish artists whose work was darker, grayer and Goyaesque.

[10] During a 2015 panel discussion titled "Painting and the Legacy of Feminism" at Maccarone Gallery, Semmel stated "I would like to get away from the basic declaration of why there are no great women artists.

"[6] Though Semmel has created many different series throughout her career, the majority of her oeuvre features themes of sexuality, the body, intimacy and self-exploration both physically and psychologically.

The subject matter is explicitly erotic, but the compositions give a nod to abstraction with expressive, unnatural colors and a strong emphasis on individual forms.

These large scale depictions of sexual activities reclaimed the gaze of the female nude, which heralded an unprecedented approach to painting and representation in the 1970s.

[7] When no commercial gallery in New York would show the series, Semmel rented space in SoHo and exhibited the work herself, attracting attention from critics.

[7] Joan Semmel, as previously discussed, had a fascination with the human body and included it within her art pieces in a sensual form.

[18] On her return to New York from Spain in 1970, she turned from abstraction towards figuration, producing works which responded to her involvement with the burgeoning women's movement.

A staunch advocate for women's rights, Semmel attended meetings at the Ad Hoc Women Artist's Committee and joined artists including Judy Chicago (born 1939), Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015), Nancy Spero (1926–2009) and Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), who had all begun to use the female body in their work.

Joan was quoted on the topic; "My return to the figure in 1970, from an Abstract Expressionist background, was prompted by a need to work from a more personal viewpoint, and was charged by my then-emerging consciousness as a feminist.

"[19] Semmel describes this series, which was exhibited at Lerner Heller Gallery: "the main compositional figure is repeated twice: once in a realist style and a second much larger highly expressionistic version.

Semmel took photographs in women's locker rooms, using the mirror and the camera "as strategies to destabilize the point of view (who is looking at whom) and to engage the viewer as a participant.

The Overlays series (1992–96), combines conceptual and formal concerns that echo many of Joan Semmel's previous investigations.

Writing about this series, she observes, “both non-naturalistic color and linear overlays of complementary or contrasting images, again recall abstract elements, but also provoke a suggestion of time, motion, or memory.”[21]Inspired by old mannequins she found on the street, Semmel worked with these "idealized versions of the female body...as alter egos to explore the isolation and anomie of objectification and fetishization.

Layered and blurred compositions, these works suggest instability, movement, and the passage of time; in Semmel's words, “[they] seem to reference the anxious moments of personal lives, as well as … visualize the inevitability of aging.” Ultimately, reflecting on this and other recent series, Semmel expands, “In a culture so driven by youth, but due to suddenly be overtaken by the baby boomer generation in old age, it seems essential to address our expectations and priorities.

Intimate in scale and rendered in a variety of styles, these paintings adopt both the realism of her earlier With Camera works (2001–06), as well as the blurring of her Shifting Images compositions (2006–13).

Recalling Semmel's 1990s Overlays series, many of these works feature silhouettes of her body superimposed over realistic renderings of her form.

[7] Her most recent work explores the physical and psychological experiences associated with aging while continuing to be self-referential and engaging in her paintings.

Challenging the patriarchal gaze of an objectified nude female body, Semmel's work dissolves the typically clearly demarcated lines between artist and model, viewer and subject[25] In 2021 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts held a retrospective entitled Joan Semmel: Skin in the Game.