2019 INVITATIONAL

The Art League's Invitational Exhibit honors two artists whose body of work is top-tier and who have been nominated for the Artist of the Year. This year's honorees are Carmen Cartiness Johnson and Yvette Shadrock. Both work in large format, both are masters of celebratory and symbolic color.

PLEASE JOIN US AT THE OPENING RECEPTION
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2019, FROM 3-5 PM
SAN ANTONIO ART LEAGUE & MUSEUM
130 KING WILLIAM STREET 78204
210-223-1140

CARMEN CARTINESS JOHNSON

Ms. Johnson was raised in Kansas City, Mo, a self-taught artist whose work was initially based on summer visits to her grandmother’s farm. Her earlier works were flat colored graphic shapes. Her paintings have progressed to a more dimensional painterly style. Carmen’s narrative art takes a snapshot of people interacting in social situations. Her faceless images allow viewers to cross racial lines placing themselves in the situation on canvas. The inspiration for her vivid paintings comes from poems, songs, novels, media and also the works of Romare Bearden and Diego Rivera.
In addition, to her figurative acrylic paintings she creates, multimedia work on paper and canvas using various papers, newsprint type, paint and photographs. These works are sometimes done in a series of ten. Each of ten having same subject matter but a different color palette.
Ms. Johnson participated in the San Antonio Tricentennial Celebration and has a commissioned work in the Freeman Coliseum and several pieces in University Health Systems of San Antonio downtown facility. In 2011 eighteen pieces of her work was exhibited at Charles A. Wright African American History Museum in Detroit. She has done a residency at Brodsky Center in New Jersey, the resultant work was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2006.
In 2008, her family moved to San Antonio, Texas from Bordentown, New Jersey. Since that time she has participated a number of juried shows.

YVETTE SHADROCK

Yvette Shadrock's art explores the creative process as a sacred experience whose source is found in the complexities of the natural world. She has felt keenly attuned with what she would call elemental spirits and energies present in all aspects of nature since early childhood. It is this ethereal, mysterious, and magical quality that colors her artistic vision, whether working in the large-scale oil paintings for which she is most well known, or in the altar-like assemblage sculptures that are similar to archeological artifacts, or the intricately cut and framed paintings of woodland flora and fauna that she has been exploring more recently. With intense and exacting attention to detail, her typical artwork is rendered with a naturalist's observational skill and an alchemist's soul.

Born in 1975, Shadrock still lives on her family's farm and cattle ranch just outside San Antonio, TX. Growing up close to nature would instill in her a passion for the outdoors and beauty of the natural world that would be her lifelong muse. The serene and healing qualities of nature that are portrayed in her oil paintings make them a natural choice for the healthcare industry and has led her to work closely with dozens of hospitals and health centers around the United States. After earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2004, she also worked extensively in the art conservation and restoration fields, revitalizing many historical buildings and churches across the country. In recent years she has been focusing more on her own work, in many ways going back and revisiting themes and subjects that have been dear to her since childhood, themes she finds more authentic to her artistic vision and bringing the two disciplines of painting and three-dimensional work to a closer alignment.