Joyce Polance is a painter based in Catskill, New York. Working in oil with her fingers, she builds and disrupts images through layering, pressing, and removal. Her paintings examine the tension between close observation and the limits of what looking can know.

Polance has had solo museum exhibitions at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin and the Dubuque Museum of Art in Iowa. In fall 2026, the James W. Palmer III Gallery at Vassar College presents The Patient Looks Back: Portraits of My Therapist, a solo exhibition bringing together a three-year body of work.

Her awards include a George Sugarman Foundation Grant, six City of Chicago Community Arts Assistance Program grants, two Judith Dawn Memorial Fund grants, and a fellowship from the Spertus Institute. Polance attended Wesleyan University and earned her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.