Nancy rourke biography
Nancy Rourke
American painter
Nancy Rourke | |
|---|---|
| Citizenship | United States |
| Occupation(s) | Artist and advocate |
Nancy Rourke is an internationally known Deaf artist and ARTivist, with a focus in oil painting.
Nancy Rourke - Deaf Art, carousel
Her pieces carry the themes of resistance, affirmation, and liberation, with stylings falling under 'Rourkeism' and 'Surdism'.[1][2][3][4]
Life
Rourke grew up in San Diego with both her parents. Her mother was from Michigan, and her father belonged to the Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians in the Kumeyaay Nation.
The family only learned she was deaf at six years old, and she credits her main form of expression before and then after this discovery was art. Her schooling focused on oralism, and Rourke was not educated in ASL until college at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She received a BFA in Graphic Design and Painting (1982) and a MFA in Computer Graphics and Painting (1986).
Two of her greatest inspirations we Nancy Rourke Paintings — Biography XIM