Shafranski Art: New Artist's Links

Over a period of a few days, I would like to discuss some of the artists that we have recently shared links with on our website. All of these artists are very successful in their respective forms of art. We hope you will enjoy reading about them and seeing some of their stunning work.

Yvonne Herd Arrowood

Yvonne Herd Arrowood is a resident of Greenville, SC and is primarily an oil painter, specializing in portraits and Old Master reproductions.

Her love of art started at the early age of three and she has never lost the excitement she feels when beginning a new painting. She loves color and shapes, shadow and light, human faces and paintings that create an emotion or tell a story.

When Yvonne was a child, Robert L. Bruns, a portrait painter and dedicated teacher, gave her two weekly classes with the adults in exchange for cleaning his studio. As a “shop-girl/apprentice”, Mr. Bruns patiently answered Yvonne’s many questions.

As an adult, she attended Covino's Old Master workshops. The discipline and structure of the classical academic method presented at the workshops complemented the excellent foundation that she received as a young teenager from Robert Bruns.

Growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, Yvonne attended Wade Hampton High School. She entered Central Wesleyan College (now Southern Wesleyan University) in 1965 and began a major in Biology and Chemistry. In 1968, she transferred to USC, graduating with honors from the College of Pharmacy in 1971.

After graduation, a pharmacy career and rearing three sons left little time for any art other than that which was conceived and executed in the mind. When the time came that she could return to “artistic pursuits”, her own personal “renaissance” began as she directed her study toward the concept of being taught, rather than intimidated, by the “Old Masters”.

Included in Yvonne’s portfolio are original portraits and reproductions of works from Botticelli to Bouguereau. Portraits include those of University of South Carolina professors Joseph LeConte, Dr. Robert Beamer, Dean Julian Fincher, and Dean Farid Sadik.

Yvonne has been the solo artist in many Carolina shows and her work has been featured in Cape Fear Arts Alive, The Greenville Journal, the Catholic Miscellany, the Palmetto Pharmacist, Southern Wesleyan University’s Focus Magazine, The Spalding Farm News Letter, Greenville News’ City People and WYFF TV.

In October 2004, Yvonne expanded her horizons by becoming a Louvre copyist. Continuing to study the masters, she painted on site in September 2005 at the Accademia Carrara in a Sister Cities International exchange between Greenville and Bergamo, Italy.

In October 2005, Yvonne again had the opportunity to paint at the Louvre, while her copy of Vouet’s Allegory of Wealth was on exhibit at the 2nd Salon des Copistes du Louvre. Her copy of Vien’s “Sleeping Hermit” was included in the 3rd Salon in March 2008.

Yvonne’s version of Raphael’s Madonna Della Sedia was displayed at the BJU Museum and Gallery in an exhibit with her favorite childhood painting, Ribera’s Ecce Homo. The exhibit, Artspeak Demystified remained on display from March 2007 thru July 2008. During the final months of the exhibit, Yvonne was privileged to finish her own copy of Ribera at the museum, while her Madonna della Sedia hung on a wall a few feet away. .

In 2008, Yvonne combined business with pleasure as she painted on site at the BJU Museum and Gallery, copying portions of Boeckhorst’ Adoration of the Magi for an educational exhibit at the Museum and Gallery at Heritage Green. Her painting of Rembrandt’s Artist in His Studio was also exhibited concurrently at the same museum from April 2008 thru July 2009.