In her symmetrical paintings Joyce explores hidden systems of nature, the built world, and the cosmos. The paintings are composed of modular and interlocking hexagons, triangles, and concentric circles with special surprise guest appearances by the occasional lily or a bit of gilded text. While in her twenties and fresh out of art school Joyce worked as a decorative painter embellishing the walls of mansions and vacation homes. Now, a couple decades later that training has seeped into her new paintings. In this recent body of work, you’ll find combinations of faux-bois, gold leafing, spatter painting, stenciling, rag-rolling, marbelizing etc. - sometimes all in one composition. By assigning each technique to its own specific shape on the canvas, Joyce creates and unfolding pattern and off-beat rhythm. The decorative finishes function as sophisticated painting solutions, rather than tromp-l’oeil trickery.
Since 1999, her work has been included in numerous exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the United States and in Europe. She is represented by Inman Gallery in Houston, Texas. In 2019 Hesse Press (Los Angeles) published a collection of Joyce’s diaristic visual poems entitled “A Cigar Caught In The Lilies.” Joyce is the lyricist and vocalist in the band Puzzle Blood whose debut album was release in 2021. Once annually, she performs stand-up comedy as Piera Nucca da Montefeltro, a world-weary 15th century Italian comedian.
“I liked things that were fixed, determinable, immutable... That was what delighted me later in plane geometry, in inorganic chemistry, in the basic laws of physics... Archimedes' principle, Atwood's machine... no risk of seeing anything whatsoever start to fluctuate, to become unstable, uncertain... I was out of my depth the moment I had to leave these regions where I felt perfectly secure and tackle the shifting, disturbing ones of three-dimensional geometry, of organic chemistry...” – from Childhood, by Nathalie Sarraute