Born in 1998 and raised in south Colorado, Ana Joyce is an oil painter currently based in New York. Ana earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2023, where they chose an individualized study program to combine painting, psychology, art history, and linguistic studies. They were awarded the NTID Summer Research Fellowship in 2022, and they worked as a research assistant studying language development in deaf children partnered with PLAYlab (perception, language, attention, youth lab). Their interest in linguistics bore of language deprivation, as Ana grew up deaf in a hearing, non-signing family. Using their passion for visual language, Ana is currently a second year Master of Fine Art candidate at Rochester Institute of Technology, where they focus on visual arts based inquiry—as painting was a way to communicate when Ana was a child. Post grad, Ana plans to teach painting and prioritize making arts academia accessible to disabled people of all backgrounds.