Steve Joyce is an artist and lecturer working a portfolio career in the creative industries, and distributes his time between personal art practice, commissions, teaching and gallery work. He works mainly within painting, but also drawing, printmaking, and collage, producing individual pieces and also installations that reflect diverse interests, thinking and observations. The materials and techniques may vary, but The work mostly explores the discrepancies between real objects or experiences, images, and expected interpretations.
Since completing his Masters Degree at the Colchester Institute he has been developing his art practice and has recently undertaken artist's residencies at the University of Suffolk and at Asylum Studios. His background includes working in artist run galleries and gallery education roles, which began while studying for his BA Fine Art Degree at Norwich University of the Arts, leading on to fulltime lecturing work in further education. He still teaches part-time though his focus is now on practicing as an artist. He arrived in Suffolk after living in Canada for while and before that he was a self-employed designer-maker originally from Norwich working in interior design and construction. Currently, he teaches art courses and workshops at The Field Centre in Flatford, The Ipswich Institute and Stokebridge Workshops.
Artist's Statement
I am interested in our connection to the world and how we express this through images. Through observation, reinvention and imagination, I create pictures and sometimes objects in installations, to convey this. I investigate the ordinary, the everyday, the familiar and re-present what I notice in different and sometimes unexpected ways. The subjects, media and methods may change, as I constantly consider the everyday in new ways, but the consistency comes from process and perception rather than stylistic traits. My current Land/Marks project centres around landscape painting. It is about places, our place in them, and also about how we respond to the presence of the pictures.
My process involves observation, visual recording, and also periods of investigation and development, where ideas and concepts emerge for how to realise my thoughts and observations. The medium is determined by the concept or subject. I am returning to the medium of painting, and landscape as a subject after many years focussing on the processes of collage and printmaking and conceptual ideas. I never seem to stop being curious about the world around me, and the experiences and images that connect us to it, through our conscious thoughts.
