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. 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 woodcut.

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, chipping away at the block color for color, from lightest to darkest, leaving no room for error - with ease. Tropical hues form a bright, cheerfully chaotic scene of domesticity, one in which creative endeavors flourish.