Joseph Breza was born in Trenton, New Jersey on June 7, 1951. He spent his childhood on the East Coast and moved to New Mexico in 1974 at the age of 23. He had already begun to draw and paint and had been attracted to New Mexico by stories of the compelling landscape and the strong community of artists.

Breza spent six years in the Pecos, New Mexico area developing and refining the unique personal vision of the landscape for which he is known today. He moved to Santa Fe in 1979. There, he added portraits and still lifes to his repertoire and started teaching painting to groups of students. His work began to be collected by patrons of various galleries where he exhibited. He was invited to show at the Santa Fe Festival of the Arts and the Festival de Verrano.

In the winter of 1984-85, Breza returned to the East Coast to study at New York's legendary Art Student's League, taking classes from such well-known artists as Richard Goetz and David Leffel.

Joseph travels throughout the U.S.A. painting in the plein-air style. Attracted to dramatic landscape, he finds the coast of California intriguing for interesting compositions. He finds the ever-changing ocean a challenge similar to the fleeting effects of the skies of New Mexico. This past summer Joseph and his family traveled for three weeks throughout Italy and Switzerland painting on location. He loved to paint in Venice where many lovely sketches were done plein-aire. Joseph currently resides with his family in Santa Fe, New Mexico.