Carl Rice Embrey: A Retrospective

Artist Carl Rice Embrey of San Antonio has produced a body of work that is unusual in its development and remarkable in its pursuit of a personal vision. Receiving his M.F.A. from the University of Texas in the mid-1960s, he began his career in an abstract expressionist style, then developed an expressionism in which representation returned, and finally arrived at a meticulous realism, in which abstraction plays a part. It has been a journey back to his place of origin, the landscape--both natural and human--of his ancestral home in Hamilton, Texas. Compared at times to Andrew Wyeth, with whom he shares stylistic affinities, Embrey does not, however, share Wyeth's emphasis on narrative qualities. His work is much closer to the tradition of Dutch landscapes and townscapes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in its clarity of vision and to Edward Hopper in its attention to light. But it is also a product of imagination--a landscape of memory. This volume is the catalog of a retrospective of Embrey's work organized in 1997 by San Antonio's McNay Art Museum, as the second of five retrospectives planned to honor and document the work of artists who have made a major contribution to the visual arts in San Antonio and South Texas. With dozens of color plates, the catalog illustrates the development of Embrey's art. An introductory essay by William J. Chiego analyzes the essence of Embrey's vision and traces his painting style from the mid-1960s until today. The catalog also includes an extended interview with the artist. An exhibition checklist, bibliography, and list of the collections and exhibitions of Embrey's work completes the volume.