Still Life with Hearts and Flowers

KC (Kacey) Joyce

The early years of Oregon artist Kacey “KC” Joyce’s art pursuits aren’t entirely clear, though it is said that her work was brought to the attention of the art world through Pablo Picasso in 1959, when Joyce would have been about 22. In 1958 Picasso had begun experimenting with color reduction linocuts. However. it is known that her formal training began in Spain, at the Cari Institute de Idiomas in Malaga. Her exposure to the world of European Modernism would remain an influence on her work throughout her career and would be the driving style of her preferred medium, the color reduction relief print.

In her print “Still Life with Hearts and Flowers” a cacophony of shapes and colors are presented through the lens of Cubism. Joyce elegantly steers the demanding reduction-cut medium, adapting her sense of style to the “suicide print” - called such as the artist uses a single block rather than several, carving away at the linoleum block, color for color, from lightest to darkest, leaving no room for error - you can't go back. Tropical hues form a bright, cheerfully chaotic scene of domesticity, one in which creative endeavors flourish.

Printmaker K.C (Kayce) Joyce was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1947. Though she was active as an artist in the late 1950s, her formal studies didn't begin until the mid 1960s, when she took courses at the Cari Institute de Idiomas, Malaga, Spain (1966 - 1967), after receiving praise from artist Pablo Picasso. She then returned briefly to the states where she attended the University of Oregon (1967 - 1968), before returning to Europe and attending the University of Pavia, Italy (1968 - 1969). Following her time in Europe she settled once more in Oregon, where she earned her BFA in printmaking at the University of Oregon, Eugene in 1972.

Of particular focus for Joyce is reduction color printmaking, which she has taught at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. She has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and her work is included in the collections of the Portland Art Museum; Oregon State University; University of Oregon Museum of Art; and the Munson Williams Proctor Museum in Utica, New York, among many others.

She continues to live and work in Eugene, Oregon.