I moved to Amarillo Texas in 1991 from NYC. I lived there, at Lake Tanglewood, for about 10 years. During that time, I painted, and I taught art at Claude ISD and Amarillo College, plus, I had two sons. I became a member of Yellow City Gallery in the late 1990’s while I was a part time faculty member at Amarillo College.
When I arrived in Amarillo, I found the landscape difficult to paint. It was so different from the East Coast. I was used to atmosphere, trees, open water, shades of green, soft light, and rolling hills. Of these, Amarillo offered little of. It seemed I was in the car driving all day long. The vastness of the plain was overwhelming. But the sky, was, spectacular. I had never seen such an amazing sky. Being at a high elevation made the clouds bigger, lower, more dramatic. Nothing interrupted the horizon. Storms were operatic in scale. I was stunned. Slowly, over time, I began to acclimate to the Amarillo landscape and I found subject matter in the ordinary places your eye would drift to while doing ordinary things. I began to take snapshots from the car. From these little snapshots, I would base my canvases.
For years I had painted solely from observation. But in Amarillo, with the wind, dust, and rattle snakes painting “en plein-air” became less appealing to me. So, working at the Yellow City Studio was great. Plus, I felt confident enough with my skills, after devoting so many years to working from observation, that working from little snapshots would not be too much of a problem. I do not recommend this practice to my students.
My family moved back to the East Coast in 2000. I am back in the woods, fields, and coast I was in born to. Landscape is a tricky subject for a painter. One searches for a place to connect with. It may have taken me awhile to adjust to Amarillo, but it left me a better painter. Difficult environments do not intimidate me anymore.
Route 66, 1999, Oil on canvas, 20”x 36”
Amarillo TX 1, 1999, Oil on canvas, 20”x 36”
Amarillo TX 2, 1999, Oil on canvas, 20”x 36”
Other Yellow City Artists:
Scott Hyde
Curators statement: Scott Hyde is the hidden gem of the Amarillo art scene. He was central to Yellow City Art gallery and an icon for the younger artists who frequented the establishment. He had the ability to capture the most important moments, and always seemed to find himself at the right moment. He saw Miles...
Chip Lord grew up in 1950’s America, a place that has been a continual source of inspiration in his work as an artist. Trained as an architect, he was a founding partner of Ant Farm, with whom he produced the video art classics Media Burn and The Eternal Frame as well as the public sculpture,...
Victoria Taylor-Gore received a BFA in 1983 from West Texas A & M University, and an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1985. Taylor-Gore has exhibited her work professionally for the past 28 years and currently is represented by the Alexandra Steven’s Gallery in Santa Fe and Cerulean Gallery in Amarillo, Texas....
These two drawings are part of a larger body of work that explores the idea of the Anima/Animus, or the inner masculine/inner feminine (as the psychologist Carl Jung described them), with an intention to create images that spoke to the 'Hieros Gamos', or alchemical marriage between these aspects of the self. I chose to symbolize...
Scott Frish joined the Sybil B. Harrington College of Fine Arts and Humanities of West Texas A&M University in 2003. He received a B.F.A. degree in two-dimensional art from the University of Arizona in 1988 and a M.F.A. degree in printmaking from the University of Washington in 1991. He is currently teaching printmaking, computer art...
Russell Stephenson is a native Texan who has spent much time in the Texas Panhandle, West Texas, and South Central Texas. He has earned a BFA in Sculpture, and an MFA in Painting/Printmaking. Russell has been an active participant in the San Antonio art scene, showing work and teaching in the community. His work has...
My interest in recording the arbitrary marks on city walls began about 10 years ago. I have walked the streets of cities in 25 states photographing the results of chance encounters between posting, tagging, painting, taping and the eventual decay of this activity. Living near the Cadillac Ranch with its steady stream of international tourists,...
De Stijl Auto Mech #3, Oil Pencil on Paper, 40"x60" This work is from a series of drawings all titled De Stijl Auto Mech. These are my Spiritual Mech Warriors. I have found inspiration in the limited primary colour pallet and abstract simplification of the Dutch movement De Stijl and combined it with Robotic Sci...
Jon Revett is an artist and educator living and working in Amarillo, Tx. He is currently the Assistant Professor of Art at West Texas A&M University. His creative genesis is a trip to Robert Smithson’s Amarillo Ramp, an earthwork, and has been published and lectured internationally about the earthwork. He was the primary organizer for...
Ashley Epps makes sculptures, paintings and installations. He is from Amarillo, TX and was a member of the Dynamite Museum. Epps’ current body of work looks simultaneously toward the future while reminiscing over the past. The present is a place too full of insecurity due to human nature’s tendency toward anxiety. Many people walk through...
Shawn Kennedy is a practicing artist and educator from Amarillo, Texas. He graduated from Amarillo High School and earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas. At UNT he received the Outstanding Undergraduate in Studio Art and exhibited in galleries throughout Dallas and Fort Worth. In 2004,...
EMMANUEL LIMÓN Born 1986 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Eman’s works are a call for identity via objects and material. A curated portrait within each work, brought by wordless teachings of self awareness. Driven by the love of motorcyles, worldwide recognized cult films and the aromatic luxury of material. Influenced by objective lustfullness, power, identity and...
Born in Canyon, Texas, Phillips worked in Albuquerque, New Mexico for the past 15 years. He will be taking over this October (2018) as the director of the Roswell Artist in Residence program. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Kansas City Art Institute (1996). and his Master of Fine Arts at the ...
Fusing a Pop-Art approach with highly traditional engravings of powerful men, this body of work questions traditional signifiers of masculinity and power. By using the stereotypically feminine media of watercolor and glitter, these paintings illuminate the artifice of wealth, power, and prestige on display in the original images. A garish palette, make up, and clothing...
Art production, for me, is a meditative act. It’s about sitting down, spending time with materials, and letting them dictate the outcome of the work. I never have an idea in terms of how I’d like the finished object to appear. I cannibalize old, failed artworks, studio debris, etc. and repurpose them to produce more...
Scot Thompson is interested in combining Thompson's elements based their violent reaction to each other and their desegregation. He transforms feelings and thoughts into tangible objects. Scot’s unique process of combining wood, iron, bronze and other materials, both natural and man-made, allows him to distill and abstract the figure. Similarly, his work on paper expands...
David Villegas is an artist who lives and works in the DFW area. Villegas received an MFA in Printmaking from the University of North Texas in 2017. He currently exhibits work in Dallas and has exhibited work nationally. While he is not making art, David spends his time teaching Art Appreciation, Drawing, and Printmaking across...
Joy Carder is a Texas-born, self-trained photographer who divides her time between the Texas panhandle and Vermont. With her camera, she explores the animalistic behavior in human nature and the irony of animals mimicking human behavior. She often has had a long friendship with the subjects in her photos and prefers to capture their image...
Memphis photographer Jaime Harmon has been has been photographing and collecting images since childhood. His work captures the perspective of regional faces, objects, historical buildings, and urban revivals that have left an impression on the area. His portrait projects became interactive by opening his studio and photo booth, Amurica, a setting for art, expression and...
