Born in Riverside, Joan Irving studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. She attended Riverside City College and studied art with Richard Allman, and then took additional instruction from Barse Miller and Edward Kaminski in Los Angeles. She began to exhibit her watercolors in the late 1930s and thereafter was  included in exhibitions in the United States and Europe. In 1946, she taught painting with her husband, Rex Brandt, in Corona del Mar.