Debra Yates

Yates, who grew up in Key West, began her career after graduating from Florida State University with a degree in Advertising Design in the 70’s. She continued her education with studies in Florence, Italy in art history. Her time spent in Italy and then later, in Brazil under the mentorship of renowned abstract painter and landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx, has helped her develop a style that radiates a third world primitive character.

She is one of South Florida’s true Renaissance women. Her work, known for the abstract nature of mixed media paintings and mosaics, is about space, composition, proportion and texture.

Yates has had 24 solo shows around the country from the Hamptons to Wynwood. Large-scale commissions include two paintings she did for Neiman Marcus; the 135′ by eight-foot mosaic semicircular wall on Collins Avenue at 73 Street, which she created for the City of Miami Beach; and the 100-foot by 10-foot multimedia Barricade Wall she created at the Miami International Airport.

The awards that Yates is most proud to have received are the South Florida Cultural Consortium in 2000, the Roedel Foundation Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center and the Dina Baker abstract painting award in 2017 from the Cultural Council of Palm Beach.

Her studio is located near downtown and the ocean in Lake Worth Beach.