On her eighth birthday Debra Yates received the gift of oil paints and canvas. When she ran out of canvas, she painted driftwood. When she won a statewide scholastic art competition in high school, her family home was already a gallery of her work. Growing up in Key West gave Debra Yates a quintessential perspective on art. The island, known for its artistic freedom and historic preservation, has long been a haven for emerging and established artists. Yates may have island roots, but she is also well traveled. After graduating from Florida State University with a degree in advertising design, she studied art history in Florence, Italy. She began her career in New York as an ad agency art director, moved into magazines—first working in design development for Hearst Publications—and then as art director for Miami Magazine and the Miami Herald’s Tropic magazine. Yates served as art director for Florida Home & Garden for 10 years before it ceased publication. Renowned Brazilian artist and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx, frequently called the father of modern landscape architecture, is her mentor. For 15 years, Yates’ annual treks to Brazil for Marx’s birthday parties are reflected in the third-world influences in her works.As an artist, she is known for the abstract nature of her striking mixed media paintings and mosaics. Large-scale commissions include two paintings she did for Neiman Marcus at Millennium Mall in Orlando, Florida; the 135-foot by eight-foot mosaic-tile semicircular wall at the North Beach Transit Shelter at Collins Avenue and 73rd Street, which she created for the city of Miami Beach; and the 100-foot by 10-foot multimedia barricade wall she composed at Miami International Airport.Her mosaics, paintings and design work have been published in books and magazines. Two awards that Yates is most proud to have received are the 2000 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship and the 2002 Rodel Foundation Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center.Yates brings to each project an artist’s sense of color, a graphic designer’s love of white space, a sculptor’s feel for texture, an architect’s eye for detail, a landscaper’s appreciation for earthy elements and an inherent understanding of the importance of light.
Since the 1980s, when the Barbara Gillman Gallery in Miami exhibited Yates’ large-scale abstracts, the artist’s vision has expanded. With more than 16 one-person shows to her credit, she has broadened her scope of work to include sculpture, garden and spatial design.Her most recent works are “an evolution of layering—of painting, color and texture,” says the artist, who starts with one color and then builds upon it. There are no sketches or preconceived ideas. Yates uses diverse materials to construct assemblages of both primitive and modern elements. She draws inspiration from the merging of different cultural backgrounds. Compositional balance is achieved through a strong sense of color and shape. Her paintings are exhibited at Lucky Street Gallery in Key West.
Neiman Marcus, Orlando; SAS Institute, Cary, North Carolina; Disney Hilton, Los Angeles; Nissan Corporation, Los Angeles; Mulia Hilton, Jakarta; Eastern National Bank, Miami; Charles H. Townsend, Conde Nast Corporation; Jack and Teri Spottswood, Key West; Judy Zabar, Key West; Alan Newman Research, Richmond Virginia