Nancy Hilliard Joyce (b. 1972, Greenville, South Carolina) lives and creates out of her home studio located in Concord, NC. There she paints recurrent themes of flowers gone to seed and flight patterns of birds which illuminate her fascination with the observation of nature and time. In her most current exploration, Hilliard Joyce journeys through the creation of abstracted and untrammeled garden settings peppered with botanicals and freedom-filled bird imagery. Within her mixed media pieces, you may notice touches of gold leaf, graphite drawings, delicate ink markings, elements of collage, or details of hand-painted images in both oils and acrylic.
At the age of sixteen, Hilliard Joyce was accepted into the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. She earned her BA in Art History from Wofford College and her MA in Art Education from the University of New Mexico. For over 10 years she lived in Manhattan and New Jersey as a working artist. From 2012 – 2017, she served on the Board of Trustees at the Asheville Art Museum and was an active member of the River Arts District Association in Asheville, NC. Today, Hilliard Joyce is a board member of The Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Foundation as well as The Cabarrus Arts Council board. She is the art curator for boutique hotels located throughout the southeast and regularly produces large-scale commission work for public spaces. She is passionate about giving back to the environment, women, and children in need and uses her art as a platform to raise money for charity and non-profit organizations. Her work has been featured in Vanity Fair Magazine, Rolling Stones, Southern Living, The Wall Street Journal, and House & Garden UK, just to name a few. Her paintings are appreciated and widely collected throughout the world in many homes, hotels, corporate offices, and airports. She is known as a contemporary, mixed-media artist with an Americana flair.
Hilliard Joyce is introspective, philanthropic and deeply passionate about leaving a mark on the world. As an artist, she acts as a liaison between reality and metaphors often using surreal overtones. Beyond painting what she sees, Hilliard Joyce aims to understand her surroundings on a deeper level. During this exploration, she reveals to the viewer a perspective they wouldn’t normally happen upon in their daily life.
To follow Nancy’s daily art feed, visit Instagram or Facebook @NancyJoyceArt.
Selected large-scale projects include:
- Fall of 2020: Installation of a custom 8 foot x 4 foot commission painting into a private collection in upstate South Carolina.
- Winter of 2020: Installation of 6 large-scale paintings into Carolina East Medical Center, New Bern, NC
- Fall of 2019: Installation into Mission Health Systems, Asheville, NC
- Fall of 2018: Two, eight-foot commission paintings installed into the Hilton @Columbia Place Hotel.
- Summer of 2018: Published “The Education of Little Me: A Short Memoir Connecting Passion with Purpose”.
- Spring of 2018: Two, fourteen-foot triptych commission pieces installed into the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.
- Summer 2017: Art Consultant for Greenville, SC’s Downtown @RiverPlace Embassy Suites + installation of “Greenville Roots” painting.
- Fall of 2015: Nancy raised funds from her art show, “Bicyclette”, to travel to remote regions of Cambodia and delivered over 250 all-terrain bicycles to young, underprivileged girls. These bicycles were distributed at a ceremony where Nancy spoke through a translator about the importance of education and self-esteem for young girls.
- 2015 – 2019: Collaboration with Crossroads Label Group and Mountain Home Music Company as a conceptualizer + artist who paints large-scale works that are then spun into CD covers and released on National levels.
- Summer 2015: A permanent installation of her 75″ x 148″ triptych painting in South Carolina’s newest mixed-use hub building called, ONE.
- Summer 2014: Nancy curated an installation for a group of select artists in Western North Carolina. She has several large-scale pieces on the walls of EDISON’S, which is located inside the historic OMNI Grove Park Inn.
- Winter 2014: Nancy partnered with Girls on the Run of Western North Carolina to create a body of work titled, “Thirteen”. This exhibition showcased 13 historical and influential women which included large-scale paintings of Rosa Parks, Annie Oakley, Sacagawea, Amelia Earhart and Joan of Arc, just to name a few.
- Summer of 2014: Nancy created a one-of-a-kind painting for Green Man Brewery in collaboration of Toad the Wet Sprocket which was used for the label of a seasonal, wet-hopped IPA beer.