Moving through our days at lightening speed, living our high tech lives of instant gratification, many of us are sanitized and sheltered from the rest of the world. As Americans, we rarely stop to think and much less get to know other cultures and other ways of life. Joyce Birkenstock understands the above mind set, but she won't accept it. Instead, she has made it her life's work to bring other worlds to us, and invites us to look beyond all the differences and discover how much is the same. She offers her work as a mirror in the hope that in each face we see a reflection, however faint, of our own. With her paintings, she opens the door into countries and cultures across the globe. She shares the souls of these regions' indigenous people with her masterful portraits, and each person seems to jump off the canvas as if to proclaim, "Welcome to my world."

Her collection of international portraiture entitled "Artistic Journeys" is informative as well as inspiring. She has spent years traveling and photographing people and then painting them with one goal in mind.

"My primary purpose is to give others an artistic opportunity to see who these people are," she said.

It's fortunate for those who have been transported to other countries through her paintings that Joyce heard the call to paint in this way and answered it. She always knew she was an artist, and majored in Art at the University of Dallas but didn't start painting until later in life.
"It sounds odd, but I simply had a revelation, " she said. "I just woke up one day and knew I needed to paint."

As much as Joyce needs to paint, her subjects need to be painted. Each of these lives has a story that deserves to be told. Personal stories, stories representative of their country, their culture and their heritage.

One such subject left a permanent impression on Joyce. A young man in Ecuador took her high into mist covered mountains to meet his family. They lived in primitive conditions; a cinder block house, a campfire kitchen, logs for benches. She remembers the lunch his mother served.
"We ate boiled corn and potatoes and cheese," she recalls. "I think they bought the cheese just for us, and it was probably a great expense for them."

The young man's family were weavers and one family member took great pride in showing how he worked his loom.

"The whole experience was so precious and moving to me," Joyce said. "These people are so real it just blows me away."

After a trip, Joyce paints from the many photographs she has taken. She needs no muse's visit to pick up her brushes. Painting is truly her life.

"I paint all the time, and if I'm not painting, then I'm thinking about it," she said. "I just love painting these people. It is so inspiring."

Joyce's works serve as historical records of civilizations and cultures that are too quickly disappearing, but they play a deeper role and answer to a higher call than that. Her paintings are at their core, art. Her unique subjects add a dimension not found in traditional portraiture, but it is the stroke of her brush, the gentle manipulation of light and ability to breathe life into flat canvas that bind her to the realm of all great painters.

In this way, Joyce has accomplished what all portrait artists strive for, to create more than a likeness and create a work of art. By getting to know her subjects, by getting in tune with them, she is able to put their soul into her paintings. She credits her skill as a photographer as well.
"There is a presence that I capture first on film," she said. "I can't exactly explain it but sometimes it is just there, all over them."

Joyce believes she is lucky to meet and spend time with the people she paints. She gets to see that in their simplicity, they are the substance we sometimes miss in all the glitter and glitz of our materialistic lives.

"Here we are so superficial," she said. "There they have only the blanket on their backs. They wear no masks."

Joyce sees her works as a celebration of humanity, and indeed they are. But for all those touched by her work, they are a celebration of art and the power it has to change lives.

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