Joyce Pensato (American, b.1941) is a Contemporary painter, known for her large-scale, gestural paintings of cartoon faces executed in black and white enamel. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, her father was a printmaker who encouraged her to pursue art. She studied at the New York Studio School, where over time she developed an interest in using pop culture material in her work, starting with Batman. This was a catalyst for her ongoing project of frenetically painted and splattered canvases of recognizable characters and mascots, including Homer Simpson, Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse. She cites Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning as lasting influences in her work.

Pensato is the recipient of numerous awards for her work, including the Robert de Niro, Sr. Prize in 2013, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award in 1997, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996. She has exhibited widely, notably with Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Lisson Gallery in London, and the Kunstraum Innsbruck in Austria, among many others. Her work can be found in many prestigious public collections such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, among others.