Joan Dance Art

Joan Dance 2/26/1940 - 4/11/2023 Art for sale

Joan Dance was a self-taught African-American folk artist. After a period in her life when she looked to poetry as a means of self-expression, Dance began painting in 1964. Her first drawing of a church led to other churches in her work. In 1984, Dance entered another phase that incorporated all previous pastimes into one all-consuming form known as ‘Folk Art’. Later she added people and children into her art and developed a bold and colorful Folk Art style, which expresses the lives of women and their role in sustaining family and community.

Dance’s Folk Art consists mainly of her own memory paintings and family memories passed down repeatedly by two family oral historians: Eula Mae Kizer and Grace Grubbs Majors. These family members often spoke of their parents and grandparents who were formerly enslaved in Lexington, Kentucky.

Significant recognition for Dance’s work includes the 1998 Kentucky Folk Art Center exhibition African-American Folk Art in Kentucky, and inclusion in its permanent collection. She is also featured in Kentucky Women: Two Centuries of Indomitable Spirit and Vision, authored by Eugenia Potter and published by Big Tree Press in 1997. Dance’s humor and storytelling abilities convey a history and culture of Paducah which is largely unseen and untold.

Joan Dance Art for Sale

View all of these artworks in our Gift Shop at 825 Paris Rd, Mayfield, Kentucky
Inquire: icehousearts@gmail.com or (270) 247-6971

An Angel

6"x6"

$150

Worship Angel

6"x9"

$286

Honest Abe

7"x8"

$350

Honest Abe

7"x8"

$350

The Farm #22

9"x12"

$628

A Time of War

Ecclesiastes

9"x12"

$500

Girl in the Mirror

11"x14"

$942

Snow Cream Pals

10"x11"

$450

Joseph's Coat of

Many Colors

9"x12"

$525

The Farm

9"x12"

$932

Quilters #2

8"x8"

$375