James Larry Yale (1947–2023)

James Yale was a self-taught artist who could be compared to Leonardo da Vinci for his scientific, naturalistic, and artistic curiosity. He found much of his inspiration in the beauty of natural settings in the Ozark Mountains.

James Larry Yale was born on January 31, 1947, in the rural farming town of Jasper, Missouri, to Ray Yale and Elva Phillips Yale; his father was an auto mechanic, and his mother was the bookkeeper for the auto shop. He had one sister, Rayanne. As a child, Yale expressed an interest and ability in writing, drawing, and painting, encouraged by his grandmother Frances Phillips. Yale had few opportunities to be introduced to formal art training during his years in rural public schools, though he pored over books and visited galleries and museums whenever possible, and he passed the Missouri architecture exam in high school.

In 1968, he married Betty Gripka and went to Houston, Texas, to work for the engineering firm Ray Geophysical Inc., doing contract work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Yale watched the Apollo 11 astronauts land on the moon from Mission Control at NASA and heard everything that was being communicated with the Apollo astronauts on the moon. Yale’s grandfather Herb Phillips—who had worked at the bicycle shop of the Wright Brothers, greasing the tracks for their first flight—later questioned him if the moon landing was real. The last project Yale worked on was the Passive Seismic Experiments Package (PSEP), an analog/digital seismographic computer powered by sun rays to measure meteoric showers and moonquakes; it was deployed as part of the Apollo 11 mission.

Yale and his wife had returned to Joplin by September 1969. He studied from 1969 to 1971 at Joplin Junior College and apprenticed with Arthur Boles, who was a retired professor from the Art Institute of Chicago. Boles did etchings for Pablo Picasso and sent Picasso samples of Yale’s work, which led to Picasso inviting Yale to visit him. Although Yale never met Picasso, he apprenticed with several professional artists, including Louis and Elsie Freund, Tommy Thomas, Glenn Gant, and Charles Banks Wilson, and he had a brief visit to the studio of Thomas Hart Benton.

In 1971, he opened the 800-square-foot Yale Art Gallery in an old grocery store building in Joplin. The following year, however, with his marriage rocky, he headed to New Orleans, Louisiana, to work as a street artist. He went back to Houston in 1973 to work as a draftsman and technical illustrator for a company that made stainless-steel kitchen equipment and fixtures. He then reconciled with his wife and rented a studio on the top floor of the New Orleans Hotel in Eureka Springs (Carroll County). He then rented Jack’s Juice Bar on Spring Street, where the old Flat Iron Building stood, and converted it into a tiny space he called the Paint Factory, where he did pastel portraits. From 1975 to 1977, he operated the Chambered Nautilus Gallery in Eureka Springs. His wife gave birth to a son in late 1976, and they later had a daughter. In 1977, they moved to Fayetteville (Washington County).

Yale worked in print and video advertising, commercial art, and architectural renderings, illustrating newspapers, magazines, books, and album cover art. (For example, his artwork appeared in a 1979 article by Dr. Benjamin Spock in Redbook magazine.) At the same time, he traveled across the country sketching, painting portraits, and receiving commissions. Beginning in the 1970s, Yale painted a series of portraits that gained him a reputation as a fine portrait painter: Bill Clinton, Sam and Helen Walton, John Tyson, and horticulturist Carl A. Totemeier; he also created a bust and oil painting of Sequoyah for the Cherokee Nation. Yale created over 2,000 pastel, charcoal, and conte portraits.

In 1980, Yale exhibited in the Arkansas State Capitol’s rotunda a series of depictions of famous American Indian tribal leaders, followed by an exhibit of terracotta sculptures that included a bust of his friend architect Fay Jones. The bust and the original working drawings of Fay Jones are held at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville. After Jim Lambeth, a UA architecture professor who was Yale’s close friend, died suddenly, his wife Joyce Lambeth commissioned Yale to paint his portrait, which is on display at the Inn at Carnall Hall on the UA campus.

Yale was an avid historian, capturing northwestern Arkansas history before the buildings were lost. He was commissioned by Helen Walton to create architectural renderings for buildings in Bentonville (Benton County) and Bella Vista (Benton County) from 1981 to 1983, and he created pen-and-ink drawings of the architecture of Rogers (Benton County), Eureka Springs, and the War Eagle Bridge. His interest in science is reflected in his “cosmic realism” paintings.

Sometimes, notable people reached out to Yale. After Chris Stein and Debbie Harry of the band Blondie showed John Lennon some of Yale’s illustrations, Lennon called Yale. As Yale later recounted, “One day, the phone rang. He said he was John Lennon. ‘Sure you are,’ I said. I hung up on him. The phone rang again. I hung up again. He kept calling. Finally, I said, ‘If you’re John Lennon, sing something.’ He did. I knew it was John Lennon because my friends couldn’t sing.” Lennon asked Yale to create an illustration he planned to give to members of Paul McCartney’s band Wings. The image, a woman with dragonfly wings, was nearing completion when Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980.

Yale later moved to a house on Beaver Lake. In 1989, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), but he continued to paint, deciding to paint for himself and only take commissions that interested him. Some of these paintings included portraits of Willie Nelson, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Don Tyson, as well as the paintings Water Nymph, Amaryllis Moon, and The Fallen Angel of War and Peace.

Yale’s first wife left in 1996; their divorce was finalized in 2000. From 1999 to 2001, he operated the Juxtaom Gallery in Eureka Springs. He married Charlotte Buchanan in 2008.

Yale died on August 18, 2023. After his death, his widow and daughter formed the James Yale Legacy Project, with the aim to create a comprehensive catalog of his artwork.

For additional information:
The Art of James Yale. https://jamesyale.com/ (accessed October 29, 2026).

Parks, Michelle. “James Larry Yale.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 23, 2009. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2009/aug/23/james-larry-yale-20090823/ (accessed October 29, 2026).

Staggs, Dustin. “Lost Artist of the Ozarks.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 26, 2026, pp. 1E, 6E. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2026/mar/25/lost-artist-of-the-ozarks-charlotte-buchanan-yale-is-rediscovering-the-life-and-legacy-of-her-husband-james-yale/ (accessed October 29, 2026).