Our inaugural GIVE.BUILD.SHARE Artist is known as “Joyce” among her family and friends, Cecelia Joyce Price is a life-long educator of more than 30 years. She has taught high school, has served as a public-school administrator, has been a Vacation Bible School Director, and has taught pre-service teachers as a college instructor of record. In 2017, she graduated with a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and with a concentration in language and literacy from University of North Texas, Denton, Texas. Currently, she is a full-time faculty member in the School of Education at Dallas College. She is passionate about the teaching pedagogy, multimodalities, the arts, and arts-based research.

She began painting at the age of 37 after hearing what she believes was God’s whisper urging her to use a skill she did not know she had. And so, she began to paint! A few weeks later, Johnson, her husband, purchased an easel for Joyce, and she set up a painting area in their dining room. She wanted to learn more, so she bought several instruction books, and painted whatever seemed beautiful to her. One day, she placed a supply order using a form in one of those instruction books. When the order arrived, it came with an invitation to study with Jerry Yarnell, a wildlife artist and author of the text, who planned to conduct a workshop in Dallas later that year. After attending his workshop, Jerry encouraged Joyce to study with him. For the next few years, she travelled to Jerry’s sessions in and around Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. But soon a new, family-owned art school developed 10 minutes from her home—Visual Expressions Creative Arts School (VECAS) in Cedar Hill, Texas. She enrolled and studied under some of the finest art teachers in Dallas-Fort Worth: Kelli Howie, June Holloway, and Robin Ingle, owner of VECAS.  Today, Joyce has blended her life as an educator and researcher with her love for painting. She conducts children’s art parties on Saturdays at VECAS, and she paints works that express themes of community, identity, unity, and literacy based upon images she photographed during a Ghanaian retreat with Dr. Dillard and seven Black women in higher education.

Whispered Inspirations Art Studio  Cjoyceprice.com

Nine years ago, her dining room art space had grown sorely insufficient, so she had a studio built in her backyard, and there she continues to create works of love for her clients, her family, and for herself. With each piece she paints, she has sought to capture love in whatever form love reveals itself. She finds great joy when viewers share that they feel this love in her work.

She has been a writer for Dallas Art News, an online publication highlighting the latest art news in Dallas Fort Worth and surrounding areas. She has been featured in The North Texan, and her artwork has appeared in the online publications Follow the Leader: Equity and Social Justice (p 34-35) and Journal of Language and Literacy Education.

Joyce is a member of Concord Church in Dallas, Texas, and also has strong ties at Good Street Baptist Church where she and her husband met as children. She and Johnson T. Price will be married twenty-five years in August 2021, and they live close to Joyce’s parents, sister, and niece Joni, who Joyce lovingly calls her “Punkin.”

She is honored to be the inaugural artist of Give.Build.Share’s campaign to build schools in Mpeasem in Ghana, West Africa. All of her works are available for purchase at Cjoyceprice.com. Selections also include limited edition prints of her second series called “Community, Literacy: Identity” which includes her latest works “Ghanaian Village Women,” “Studious Young Men,” and “Literate Young Ladies,” among others. Clients may select from her past limited edition prints of her Futures of Mpeasem series which include  “Teacher Victoria and Her Students,” “Literacy and Liberation,” and “Celebration!” Half of the proceeds of all sales will go towards the building of the schools in Mpeasem and ultimately toward building the futures of the children and families who live there!