UNDER PRESSURE
2016 - 2021
Under Pressure brings together two related groups of figurative oil paintings made between 2016 and 2021. In the smaller works, portrait heads are built up, eroded, and reworked until the image seems to hold the pressure of its own making. In the larger works, bodies and surrounding space begin to dissolve into each other. Across both groups, the surface carries traces of touch, distortion, and resistance. The image is pushed toward the threshold between coherence and collapse.
PRESSURE 2016 - 2021
Installation view: 4 x 4 ft. grid, 16 works, 2016-2021, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in. each
Witness, 2018, oil on canvas 20 x 20 in.
Blind (grid detail), 2017, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in.
Scare (grid detail), 2021, oil on canvs, 12 x 12 in.
When, 2018, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 in.
News, 2018, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 in.
FIGURES UNDER PRESSURE 2020 - 2021
Ocean, 2021, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 in.
Incident, 2020, oil on canvas, 57 x 40 in.
Fathom, 2020, oil on canvas, 54 x 40 in.
Cascade, 2020, oil on canvas, 57 x 40 in.
Joyce Polance is a painter based in Catskill, New York. She has presented solo museum exhibitions at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art and the Dubuque Museum of Art. An upcoming solo exhibition of The Patient Looks Back will be presented at the Palmer Gallery, Vassar College, in fall 2026.