Meet The Artists - Nancy Rourke
Full-time Artist
Hi, my name is Nancy Rourke. I am a full-time artist living in Loveland, Colorado. I was born deaf not knowing until I was six years old. I grew up in San Diego. My mother and sisters learned sign language when I was in middle school. I have been to a mainstreamed program in different schools all my life.
I first started painting when I was about six or seven years old. Growing up doing so many paintings from rocks to canvases I became much more involved in the art world. I decided to study art at National Technical Institute of the Deaf and have cross-registered to Rochester Institute of Technology. I received three degrees in graphic design, painting and computer graphics. I have been in the corporate world for the past sixteen years as a graphic designer for Xerox and IBM, a palette designer for classic black and white films including Casablanca and King Kong and more classic films in San Diego, for 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles. I then moved to Seattle, WA and became a graphic designer at Microsoft Corporation until in 1994 I got laid off. I decided to become a full time painter and moved to Denver, Colorado.
During my art career, I took the invitation to be interviewed with Herb Larson’s Off Hand with Los Angeles KHJ-TV Channel 9 in 1986. The interview was about my being a computer graphic designer. A few weeks later, I was one of the twelve deaf artists to be invited at the Ankrum Art Gallery in Beverly Hills, CA, to display six of my computer graphic paintings.
In 2002, I was a recipient to be honored for the Edmund Lyon Memorial Lectureship Award at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, discussing my being a deaf artist.
Currently, I am studying Deaf History and Deafhood, and doing oil paintings on deaf-related issues. I use vibrant colors and making new primitive elements. It is what I see. I tend to do risk-taking of what I paint. The artists I admire the most are — Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Willem de Kooning.
I am currently working full time in painting and doing exhibits across the country and in the galleries at the Denver’s most popular Santa Fe Art District.
