Nancy Jo Ward is an American media artist based in Santa Maria, California, known for richly layered portraits of fictional women that merge digital imagery with tactile, mixed-media surfaces. Born in Dayton, Ohio, she studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and later earned an MFA in Fine Art Digital with Distinction from the University of the Arts London, Camberwell College.

Her studio work often begins with images developed in iPhone photo and art apps, which she then transforms through drawing, painting, collage, and printing onto aluminum, archival papers, and crystalline-coated polymer. Acrylics, oils, pastels, metallic foils and other analog materials build a luminous, physical presence that invites close viewing and rewards collectors who value surface, detail, and craft. The fictional women who inhabit her work carry emotional weight—suggesting memory, loss, resilience, and inner dialog—while remaining open enough for viewers to project their own stories.

Alongside her studio practice, Ward creates LED light-based public artworks that translate her interest in experience, atmosphere, and narrative into large-scale, site-responsive installations. Using programmable LEDs, data-driven sequences, and sculptural forms, she designs luminous environments that shift over time, inviting passersby to experience light as both material and metaphor. This public work extends her long engagement with media and technology into the urban landscape, connecting intimate, psychologically charged imagery with shared spaces and communal experience.

In recent years she has also explored animation, AI-informed processes, augmented reality, NFTs, and experimental video, offering both traditional acquisitions and digital editions. Drawing from graffiti, social media, and pop culture yet grounded in decades of painting, teaching, and international exhibition, Ward builds a cohesive, collectable body of work that bridges technology and touch for both gallery audiences and private collectors.

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