NEW WCAAC ARTIST

Bernard Hoyes

Bernard Stanley Hoyes’ professional artist career began at the early age of nine in his home town of Kingston, Jamaica. Bernard's mother sold his wood carvings and watercolors to visitors at the Jamaica Tourist Board to help maintain the household and support his creative efforts.

I have been a creator of art, symbols of ancestral echoes since a child in Jamaica... The images I convey symbolize a culmination of these ancestral echoes brought to classical form. They are contemporary, eternal in spirit and stand as praise to our existence --past, present and future.

Known for his colorful and rhythmical compositions that reflect his Jamaican heritage, Bernard Stanley Hoyes began his career at the early age of nine in his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica, by creating wood carvings and watercolors that his mother sold to visitors at the Jamaica Tourist Board. At age 15, he moved to New York to live with his father and began attending evening classes at the Art Students League in the late 1960s, under the apprenticeship of established artists, such as Norman Lewis, Huie Lee Smith and John Torres. His artistic pursuits then took him to the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in painting and design.

After working in San Francisco, he moved to Los Angeles at the end of 1975, where he has worked as a designer, solo artist and muralist. He has worked with the Los Angeles Citywide Murals Programs and has created many murals that reflect social advocacy and the African American and Latino communities, including the "Black Folk Art in America" mural commissioned by the Craft & Folk Art Museum and most recently, the "In the Spirit of Contribution" mural located on LaSalle Street in the Historic West Adams District and commissioned by First A.M.E. Church. He is also a member and active participant in many art organizations, such as LACE, Artist for Economic Action, Artists Equity Association, California Confederation of the Arts, Studio Z, the Graphic Arts Guild and Self-Help Graphics.

For an extensive review and biography, please refer to: Jamaican Sources and African American Visions, The Art of Bernard Hoyes at http://www.nathanielturner.com/artofbernardhoyes.htm