Nancy Rourke

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Nancy Rourke (born in the 1950s) is a Deaf American painter, muralist, and activist. She grew up in San Diego, California, and studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, earning a BFA in Graphic Design and Painting in 1982 and an MFA in Computer Graphics and Painting in 1986. After two decades as a corporate graphic designer, she returned to full‑time art around 2009–2011, focusing on Deaf culture and social justice. She is a leading figure in the Deaf View/Image Art (De’VIA) movement, associated with the Second Wave of De’VIA or “Rourkeism,” using bold colors, thick paint, and imagery of hands, mouths, and eyes to express Deaf identity and resistance to audism and oralism. Her work has been shown widely in the U.S. and internationally, and she has taught art in schools and led residencies and retreats to bring De’VIA into classrooms and communities. In 2014 she published Deaf Artist Series: Nancy Rourke. She received the Laurent Clerc Award from Gallaudet University in 2019 and was named a 2024 Disability Futures Fellow by the Ford and Mellon Foundations. Learn more at nancyrourke.com.