Joel Griffith (b. 1974) grew up in Tivoli, N.Y. He earned his MFA from Bard College in 2003. In 1998 he attended Lacoste Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France. He participated in the Associated Colleges of the Mid-West Chicago Semester in the Arts in 1994, and received his BA with honors from Grinnell College in 1996.

Griffith has been exhibiting throughout the Hudson Valley since 1994. His paintings have been included in exhibitions of the Columbia, Dutchess, and Greene County Councils on the Arts, the 72nd and 74th Mohawk-Hudson Regional Exhibitions, and at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, the Katonah Museum of Art, and the Albany International Airport Gallery. In 2003 he was named the Painter Laureate of Tivoli. Since that time he has completed a series of seven paintings documenting the town, permanently displayed in the village's historic Watts de Peyster Hall.

In 2005 he was awarded a Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant.

Griffith currently resides in Tivoli, NY.