For more than 50 years the Texas Commission on the Arts has recognized painters, photographers, and other visual artists as the official State Artist each year.
For 2023 the Texas State Visual Artist 2D is dramatic portrait artist Gaspar Enriquez, and the Texas State Visual Artist 3D is ceramic artist James C, Watkins.
For 2024 the Texas State Visual Artist 2D is prestigious painter Michael Ray Charles, and the Texas State Visual Artist 3D is ceramic artist Diana Kersey.
The 2023 Texas State Visual Artists include El Paso native Gaspar Enriquez and Lubbock’s James C. Watkins.
Here is more on each of these talented artists from the Texas Commission on the Arts:
Gaspar Enriquez
Born in 1942 and raised in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio, Enriquez is the quintessential Chicano Texas artist with his work highlighted by acrylic, air-brushed portraits of people who interest him, from former students to celebrities.
Gaspar credits some of his courage in pursuing his art to encouragement from his mother and two sisters, his fifth-grade teacher at Beall Elementary, and his now-deceased wife, Anne Garcia-Enriquez.
He earned a BA in art from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1970 and an MA in metals from New Mexico State University in 1985.
Gaspar chose to teach to remain independently true to his vision. Along the way, he inspired art students at El Paso’s Bowie High School for 33 years, until his retirement in 2002.
Gaspar’s dramatic portraits range from works on paper of writer Rudolfo Anaya, artist Luis Jimenez and artist John Valadez for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery to 24-feet high commissions for the San Antonio Convention Center (the cholos) and illustrations for Rudolfo Anaya’s Elegy on the Death of Cesar Chavez.
His solo exhibition, Metaphors of El Barrio (2014), at the El Paso Museum of Art was a great success, holding record attendance.
James C. Watkins
James C. Watkins is a ceramic artist who has worked with clay for over 40 years. His work is held in 25 permanent collections, including the White House Collection of American Crafts at the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Shigaraki Institute of Ceramic Studies in Shigaraki, Japan, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, the Tweed Museum in Duluth, Minnesota, the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Houston, Texas.
Watkins is a Texas Tech University Horn Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He was a 2005 Senior Fulbright Scholar, teaching in Vietnam at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture. Watkins is the 2019 recipient of the HCCC Texas Master Award presented by the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Houston, Texas.
The 2024 Texas State Visual Artists include Houston’s James C. Watkins and San Antonio’s Diane Kersey.
Here is more on each of these talented artists from the Texas Commission on the Arts:
Michael Ray Charles
Michael Ray Charles received an MFA from the University of Houston in 1993.
Charles’ work explores historic African American stereotypes from the Antebellum South, appropriating images from advertising and pop culture to expose the underlying racism prevalent in contemporary culture.
Charles has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and as a juror for The Bush Artist Fellowship in St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as for the Inaugural Biennial Underground Railroad Exhibition at Northern Kentucky University. His work is represented in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and other major museum collections in both the US and abroad.
In 2018, Charles became the recipient of the prestigious American Academy in Rome, Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize, awarded to artists at the forefront of their disciplines and considered one of the most prestigious awards a practicing artist can receive.
Diana Kersey
When Diana Kersey was growing up in Lubbock, her parents allowed her to try to dig a swimming pool in their backyard. Thirteen inches down, she discovered clay, and she has been working with it ever since.
Kersey is a visual artist who exclusively works in ceramics, creating everything from small studio pieces to large architectural installations.
Recent accolades include: the Artisan Award from the Texas Society of Architects, the John Staub Award from the Texas Society of Classic Architecture and Art, the Everyday Excellence Golden Trowel from the Texas Masonry Council, the Lynn Ford Craftsman Award from The Conservation Society of San Antonio, Texas, and the Mary Jo Laughlin and Eula Whitehouse Memorial Award for Visual Arts from the Native Plant Society of Texas.
She has a BFA in drawing from Texas Tech University. Currently, she serves as an Assistant Professor at Northwest Vista College and operates Kersey Ceramics LLC in San Antonio, Texas.
Past State Artists: Visual Artists
The Texas Commission on the Arts has been selecting State Artists for more than 50 years. Here is a list of those selected in the past:
The Lone Star State has been home to so many great painters. Here are five artists that artsy.net says you should know:
There are so many talented Texas photographers it is hard to highlight just one or two but a good list to start with is the seven University of Texas at Austin alumni or faculty who have won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Photography: