Joyce Peace

Local Artist Appeases Her Desire for Self-Expression in Work
By Kathy Tucker  TULSA WORLD Published: 10/20/1993  Last Modified: 2/27/2007  8:17 AM
Tulsa artist Joyce Peace began painting 20 years ago for peace of mind.   "I was having my sanity tested (raising six children), and I said, 'It's either painting classes or a psychiatrist,'  Peace said, "and my accounting husband said, 'Well, the art classes are probably cheaper.'" Peace took oil-painting classes and then started teaching them. She discovered fabric painting, her art of choice, through one of her students.  "One of my students made a sweatshirt, and I made her teach a class on fabric painting so I could learn," Peace said. "I said, 'I just want to do one (fabric-painted garment), and I stopped counting at 2,000 pieces.'"

Peace has been teaching fabric painting for seven years at local recreation centers and Triangle Company, 7015 E. 41st St. She typically teaches four classes a week and conducts two Saturday workshops every month. She begins another series of classes Thursday at McClure Recreation Center, 7440 E. 7th St. "I thought it was a faddy thing that would die out, but it hasn't," she said. "People don't have to wear nasty T-shirts anymore. People say, 'Oh, I like your jacket,' and you can say, 'Thanks, I did it.'" Peace believes there is an art to fabric painting. She teaches her students that fabric painting isn't done flat. It requires an oil-painting technique, which includes use of color and shading.  "I try to teach them there's a reason for what colors you use and how you put them together. "Each fabric makes it look different," she said. "You're not limited to a canvas." Fabric painting allows fewer errors than oil painting, because on fabrics you use faster-drying acrylic paint.

Peace said she researches almost everything she paints. Once, she didn't do her research, and a cowboy had to tell her that she painted a horse's butt muscle in the wrong place. Before she began painting Indian designs, she didn't know that each tribe has its own colors. "You learn a lot," she said. "It makes you sound smart when you say, 'Oh yes, I was doing research the other night and found out...'"

Peace's humor shows in the caricatures she paints of pumpkins' faces, for example, or cats at the Republican National Convention. "I study my grandkids - their chubby hands and waddling behinds in diapers," she said. "The first thing I do in the morning is read the comics. I've always started my days like that. If I'm looking for an emotion, I can open the paper and find it in the comics."

Peace has several clients around the nation, in addition to her local customers. She has done work for Strictly Hers and she paints regularly for a store in Grove, but most of her work is for individuals who have special requests. "Most of the stuff I've done is because people call and say, 'A former student of yours painted this purse, and I saw it on her as she went down the hall. Can you make me one like that?'" Although she makes a pretty good "funning," as she calls it, at fabric painting, Peace tries to take off August to oil paint in New Mexico. "Oil painting I do as an art study, to work out different techniques," she said. "It's more refined than fabric painting. It takes longer. I like the feel of oils better than that of acrylic, but I've learned to love acrylics."

Peace's natural artistic talent was repressed in school. She knew she had talent, but an art teacher suggested she go back to drafting, which she did. "I'm catching up," Peace said. "I told my husband I will have to live to be 200 to take all the classes I want to take."

Pease's artistic ability seems innate. She once took a porcelain doll-making class, and the first doll she made won a blue ribbon and best of show in a competition for Tulsa ceramic artists. Doll-making lasted long enough for her to make her granddaughters' dolls and eight others. "I went out one day and sold eight of them," she said. "I got through with that and thought, 'I don't think so.' I would have to do all these things, like sewing, that I don't want to do. I've done a lot of sewing, and I don't want to anymore. I gave it up for Lent." Instead, she lets other people sew the garments and she makes art out of them. Peace paints at least five days a week, and it still brings her peace. "My mind goes to the moon or somewhere further - I don't know."
By Kathy Tucker