joyce van der hoeven was born on february 7th 1966 in the dutch village of nuenen, home of van gogh and his ‘potato eaters’.  in her teenage joyce started training as a florist, which in holland is an art, a craft and big business.  she created avant-garde arrangements of dry vinewood, slate and giant seed pods, and she built ten foot artificial trees for corporate lobbies.  joyce gained a degree in three dimensional art in 1987 and continued to work at her profession, alongside which she attended oil painting seminars under louis ector at eindhoven’s art college. in 1991 she became qualified and employed as a graphic designer, but soon realised she was losing her creativity as quickly as she was gaining computer skills.  in 1993 she took up stone sculpture and finally found her medium, working mostly with renowned sculptor lucien van der eerden in his wooded temple in the netherlands, and occasionally in ardennes, france.  in 1999 she moved to cornwall, where she continues to work with various materials, always reductively, revealing graceful and sensual forms inherent both to the stone and to herself.  the name of joyce van der hoeven is currently gaining more and more recognition as her work becomes commercially successful, selling from various galleries around west cornwall.  the bulk of her work is to be found on permanent exhibition in the padstow contemporary art gallery and in the michael praed gallery in marazion.  more pieces can be seen at the helen feiler gallery in newlyn and the market house gallery in marazion.  details of these galleries can be found on this page.