James Larry Yale

AVOCA — Just minutes from downtown Rogers, the road dips down into a valley, revealing an idyllic landscape of trees, fields, mountains and water. This serene spot, near a northwest finger of Beaver Lake, is where James Yale lives and creates.

The artist is in his own universe.

Yale is inquisitive and open-minded, with a quick humor and a gentle soul. Having battled multiple sclerosis for many years, he often puts on a strong front to mask the severe pain that comes and goes. He's a deep thinker and is enchanted by other worlds - outer space and lands with mermaids and winged maidens.

He has made a living as an artist for more than 40 years, during which he has had galleries and studios open to the public. This immensely talented artist is known for realistic renditions of people, fish and landscapes.

Early on, he did paintings and drawings of children, pets and prized bulls and quarter horses. He has since done portraits for corporations and individuals, selling work all over the world. His more famous subjects include Sam Walton, Bill Clinton and Willie Nelson.

Yale, now 62, recently sold actress Jenny McCarthy a print of I Caught a Fleeting Glimpse - the image of an angel used for the cover of the book Angel Visions by Doreen Virtue. The graceful image is an example of his distinctive depictions of fantasy and mythology, many of them incorporating nude figures.

He has spent much of his artistic career doing commissions, trying to please other people, occasionally taking time away to paint things he really wants to do, more experimental creations.

For his next big project, which he's doing for himself, he's painting portraits of people who spent their lives searching for answers and connections in the universe.

"I've been very fortunate to eke out a living [from] it and support my family," he says of being an artist. "It's time to play and have fun and enjoy life and not worry [about] what anybody else says. I'm not trying to please a critic or a gallery or a show or a client."

After spending much of his life as a workaholic, he's glad to slow down a bit and focus on this project while also building a life with his new bride, playing with their kitten and two dogs, fishing and shooting some pool.

"Life is short, so I'm just trying to have fun - pleasantly, pessimistically optimistic."

Yale, with long red hair and a graying beard, has more stories than he could ever tell, and he puffs on his tobacco pipe as he recalls just a few.

His grandmother taught him to draw, paintand play piano. He was fascinated by the elaborate illustrations in her fantasy and mythology books. Once in school, he preferred arts, writing and fishing to sports, and was "basically lost in my own little universe." He always took a sketch pad when he fished.

He dropped out of high school at 17 and moved into a single-room apartment. When his father broke his hip in an accident at work, Yale, just a few days into freedom, returned home to earn money for his family while his dad recuperated.

He finished high school while working a half-dozen jobs and got a diploma that no one has ever asked to see.

Yale worked as a design draftsman for a store fixture company, while going to night school at Joplin Junior College (now Missouri State Southern University). On weekends, he made extra money sketching pastel portraits at the local Pizza Hut.

His early influences included Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Salvador Dali, M.C. Escher and Pablo Picasso. He pored over books and, when possible, went to galleries and museums within 500 miles. Standing inches away from the works - some created centuries earlier - he examined the brushstrokes, the thickness of paint, all the details not visible in a book or a print. Then he practiced creating pieces with his own style.

One of his professors, Arthur Boles, who had retired from the Art Institute of Chicago, befriended Yale and took him and other students on as apprentices. As part of that, they helped him do work around his house, designed by Boles' friend, Frank Lloyd Wright.

"I learned more from him in just visits while I'm pulling weeds and planting roses than I did in his classes," Yale says.

Boles told stories about philosophy, ambition and creative force, describing how to focus imagination. The professor, who'd done etchings for Picasso, also sent Picasso samples of Yale's work, and Picasso invited Yale to visit him.

But Yale had fallen in love, and the woman who would be his wife for 30 years wanted him to secure a solid job. So they moved to Houston, where he worked for an engineering company that did contract work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The last project he did was a digital solar-powered seismograph that went to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission. He watched the trip from Mission Control at NASA.

LESSONS IN SELF-CONTROL

Moving around between Joplin, Houston and Eureka Springs, Yale landed in Eureka in 1973, sometimes hired by contractors to design houses. While making cabinets for a lumber company, Yale executed some designs for the late Fay Jones and later created a terra cotta bust of Jones. As Yale and Jones traipsed through the woods where Thorncrown Chapel was being built, Jones told him stories about his younger years in architecture and discovered they shared a birthday,26 years apart.

Yale also painted a portrait of Ella Carnall for the Inn at Carnall Hall, the turn-of-the-20th-century University of Arkansas women's dormitory that has been transformed into a charming inn.

At one point, Yale's work was in more than 100 galleries across the country. That kept him on the road for several months each year, calling on shops and going to shows of his work.

Now, he mainly relies on his Web site for sales. His international customers far outnumber the domestic. His work is now in only a few galleries, and he's less prolific than he once was.

He has had to slow down because of the effects of multiple sclerosis.

Neurological issues started in infancy - including severe migraine headaches. He has had seizures and episodes in which he lost his vision temporarily. In the 1970s, a chiropractor got him to try yoga and meditation. He changed his diet and uses medicinal herbs.

"I always had trouble controlling the stress," he said. "I'd either keep it bottled up inside or it would eventually, somewhere down the road, explode in a rage."

He also memorized a short mantra. Whenever he felt intense pain or lost his vision, he'd go outside, focus on the horizon and recite the statement repeatedly.

The phrase that brought him peace, part of which is unsuitable for print, essentially is, "It really doesn't matter."

The process worked, and he hasn't had a full-blown migraine since.

LEO, MEET AQUARIUS

In 1980, he was under a lot of pressure, preparing for back-to-back shows in the rotunda of the state Capitol in Little Rock. He figured the numbness in his arms and legs was from exhaustion and stress.

Yale and his first wife had just had their second child, Allison, and he simply grinned and bore the pain of his illness. Around 1985, the family moved to the house where he now lives, in the lush green near the lake. Around 1990, he was unable to function very well for about three months and, after many tests, he was diagnosed with MS. It affects his equilibrium. Unfamiliar places and lots of motion exacerbate it.

"Once I realize what's going on, I can fix it, instead of become a victim to it," he says of the episodes.

Yale and his first wife divorced in 2000. Then he met Charlotte Buchanan at an outdoor art event soon after she moved to Eureka Springs in 2002. They got to know each other when she asked him to paint a panel for The Artery, the mural exhibit in downtown Eureka Springs.

Buchanan had written down a nearly impossible list of qualities she wanted in a mate, and Yale came close to filling the bill. She wanted someone who'd dance until the end of his days.

Though he was spending most of his time in a wheelchair just two years ago, he did dance at their wedding Feb. 2. Friends came from out of state and bunked on their floor in sleeping bags for the wedding, which came the week after an ice storm struck Arkansas.

'WORK OF A MASTER'

Wanting to do a piece with layered meaning and a personal comment on the Vietnam War, Yale found his model in a guy he met in a bar who was in a self-destructive mode. After a few years of persistence, he convinced the man to model for him, seated at a picnic table, wearing a robe and drinking while playing with a knife. Most of all, his expression was angry and lost. Yale gave the man wings and added a war dog and an AK-47 rifle for the final result, Fallen Angel of War and Peace.

People who see the painting in Eureka Fine Art either love it or hate it, says the gallery's owner, Teressa Rose Ezell.

Yale doesn't want to upset people, but he likes it when his artwork strikes a nerve. "If it arouses an emotion and a person has to think about something, it's a good thing. It's not complacent," he says.

Ezell calls Yale's talent "extraordinary."

"It's the work of a master, and people recognize that. They respond to it immediately," she says.

Julie Kahn Valentine, an artist who also works in figures, says she appreciates Yale's solid and disciplined drawing skills, as well as his ability to get avery polished finish.

"He's what I call Eureka's Bouguereau," she says, referring to William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a French traditionalist painter who did realistic paintings with mythological themes. "He's able to take figures and turn them into fantasy," Valentine adds of Yale.

Although he has never gotten rich from his art, Yale says, he has always been pretty good about the business side of it. He just keeps producing work, and pieces seem to sell before he runs out of money.

"You have to spend far more time promoting the work and displaying the work and preserving the work than you ever have time to actually do the work," he says.

Years ago, a dozen people worked for him at his studio and gallery in Joplin, where they created commercial and fine art. That left him free to travel more. Later, he ran Juxtaom Fine Arts Gallery in Eureka Springs for nearly two years, staying open late for walk-in customers to discuss art over wine.

After Sept. 11, 2001, things changed. Sales stopped, and commissions - already booked, with deposits paid - were canceled. He didn't have the money or good health to bounce back, so he shut down the gallery and retreated to his rural home near Avoca.

Here, he has created a studio space decorated with a matching red couch and chair and walls adorned with artwork and photographs.

Above the fireplace hangs a portrait he did of Willie Nelson, signed by the musician after a Eureka Springs concert. Next to it is a detailed pen and ink of John Lennon, done by Yale's friend, Max Elbo.

Ezell, the gallery owner, says the Nelson prints are so realistic that she has had to convince some people that they aren't color photographs.

Thirty years ago, Yale could easily create 40 or more paintings a year.

"Now if I do two or three, I've had a good year."

Yale often uses a cane now and no longer drives. He tires easily, so he works early in the morning, the natural light streaming through the many windows. He uses a mahlstick to steady his shaking hands as he paints.

THINKING MAN'S ART

As Yale heads into semi-retirement, his house paid for, he's taking a sabbatical from painting commissions to finish a lengthy novel he has been working on for years. The manuscript, a space saga from 1900-97, is a "90-plus percent true story." It includes stories about his grandfather, who was 15 when he went to work for two brothers in an Ohio bicycle shop and was with them at Kitty Hawk for the first airplane flight. It's not lost on Yale that he, 60-plus years later, worked with a space flight project in Houston.

Simultaneously, his wife is encouraging him to do a new art installation project.

One of the first pieces was Mystery Solved, a portrait of Albert Einstein with a nebula in the background. That painting is one of 13 original Yale paintings at Eureka Fine Art; prices run from $3,000 to $17,000. He's finishing another piece in this series, a portrait of Charles Darwin standing in the opening of a cave with a chimpanzee skull.

In addition to paintings and drawings, he'll also create papier-mache sculptures of fossils of creatures that may or may not have existed. This project might take about four years to complete, as he paints and sculpts and writes more slowly than he did in years past.

He's planning now for the exhibit, looking for a space large enough to hold all the pieces - probably at least 4,000 square feet. He figures it'll be a gallery on the West Coast because he has never fit in with the more modern East Coast art scene, he says.

"I figure at this point in my life, instead of doing portraits of people and illustrating books and magazines, I'm just having fun being semi-retired and going to spend the rest of my days just playing and poking fun at things, but yet still being realistic and provocative enough to make people go, 'Hmm' - to make people think."SELF PORTRAIT James Yale

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Jan. 31, 1947, outside Jasper, Mo.

CHILDREN Son Ely and daughter Allison

A GADGET I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IS My mahlstick.

ALWAYS IN MY REFRIGERATOR Peanut butter.

MY FAVORITE DESSERT IS Mixed fruit, yogurt and Grape-Nuts.

IF I COULD LIVE ANYWHERE OUTSIDE ARKANSAS, IT WOULD BE Amsterdam.

MY FAVORITE COLOR IS Violet.

MY FAVORITE PIECES OF ARTWORK ARE The Leonardo da Vinci sketches in a notebook Bill Gates bought (in 1994 for nearly $31 million, known as the Codex Leicester).

I LIKE TO WEAR Things that are comfortable.

I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE MET John Lennon and Leonardo da Vinci.

MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT WAS John Adams.

I WISH I KNEW MORE ABOUT The ability to have foresight instead of hindsight.

BOOKS I'VE READ THE MOST INCLUDE Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Illusions by Richard Bach and The Philosopher's Stone by Michio Kushi.

MY MOST MEMORABLE CONCERT Roger Waters, Phoenix, 1985, after he left Pink Floyd.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Animistic.