The Patient Looks Back is a series of oil paintings made entirely by hand, developed over several years through sustained focus on a single subject: my therapist.

The paintings are portraits of that therapist, reversing the usual direction of observation so that the patient becomes the one who looks, records, and returns to the same figure over time. Shown together, the works form a continuous visual situation in which recognition is delayed and attention is held.

Paint is worked directly into the canvas, layered and partially removed, leaving a record of duration and proximity. The surfaces accumulate through revision rather than resolution; likeness does not settle the image, it intensifies it.

Titles refer to the shirts worn by the subject in the source photographs—sometimes by color, sometimes by brand.

Joyce Polance is a painter based in Catskill, New York. Her work spans portraiture, figure painting, and landscape, with a focus on psychological intensity, relational presence, and tactile surface. She is currently preparing The Patient Looks Back for exhibition in New York.

Joyce Polance
Joyce.Polance@gmail.com
www.joycepolance.com
Catskill, NY