Art Exhibits

2022 Art Exhibitions

Winnsboro Center for the Arts hosts six to eight exhibitions every year. These exhibitions are a mix of solo shows, juried shows that are open to the public, and include our annual men’s and women’s art exhibitions as well as special guest exhibitions.

Prelude & Promise: WCA Celebrates 20 Years of Art — April 23 – June 11
Ray Mel: Points of View — June 18 – August 6
Women in the Arts Exhibition — August 13 – September 24
Cowboy Tales Art Exhibition — October 1 – November 26
Men in the Arts Exhibition — December – January 2

Current Exhibition

Prelude And Promise

Reception: Sunday, April 24th--2:30pm - 4:30pm

WCA exhibits a retrospective art exhibition, Prelude & Promise: WCA Celebrates 20 Years of Art, at 200 Market St. Winnsboro, Texas from April 23 – June 11. Meet the artists at a reception from 2:30 – 4:30 pm April 24 at 200 Market St.

WCA has been in operation for over 20 years. Originally established by a group of local artists and concerned citizens in 2001 as Trails Country Center for the Arts, the art center’s name was changed to Winnsboro Center for the Arts in 2009 by its Board of Directors. WCA’s location at 200 Market Street was renovated in 2014. Since then, artists have found a home at WCA for developing, teaching, and displaying their art.

The Prelude & Promise exhibition features multiple artists from WCA’s past, present, and future in a variety of art mediums including painting, pastel, sculpture, and photography. The exhibition includes works from some of WCA’s founding members including Tracy Hopkins, Grahame Hopkins, Al Moore, and Georgia Moore. It will include photos from the first official WCA photographer, George Hitz. Works by Linda Lucas Hardy, Donna Page, Shirley Gordon, Nancy Beauchamp, Spring Parnell, and Jim Willis, as well as many others will be featured.

There have been many art exhibitions in WCA’s art gallery over the years and this exhibition seeks to display both the rich history and the current direction of the art center.

Upcoming Exhibit

Points of View

Featuring Artist Ray-Mel Cornelius

Winnsboro Center for the Arts (WCA) presents Points of View art exhibition featuring artist Ray-Mel Cornelius from June 18 – August 6 at 200 Market St. Winnsboro, Texas. Meet the artist at a reception from 5 – 7 pm June 23 at 200 Market St.

As a child in the small east Texas town of Royse City, Cornelius began to draw as soon as he could hold a pencil. Before long, and with the help and encouragement of his mother, he began to create illustrated books from folded paper bags. Another favorite activity was drawing on a blackboard his mother hung in the kitchen just for him.

While his small-town school did not offer art classes, at age fourteen he enrolled in a private oil painting class where he mostly created paintings of flowers and owls which his mother loved giving to friends. Soon though, he moved on to other subject matter more appealing to him, inspired by artists of fantasy-novel covers, and comics, his two favorites of these being Frank Frazetta and Jeff Jones.

A graduate of East Texas State University where he majored in graphic design, Cornelius enjoyed the strong university art program. Like many 1970s art students he was a fan of the surrealist painters Salvador Dali and Max Ernst, as well as pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. A big influence on his work then was the original Spider-Man artist, Steve Ditko, and comics icon Jack Kirby. Today he adds David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, and Maynard Dixon to his list of favorite and influential painters.

Throughout his career as a graphic artist, Cornelius continued to exhibit his personal non-commissioned paintings. Since 2001 his work has been shown in eleven one-man shows and fifty-five group exhibitions throughout the West.

After his first extended visit to New Mexico in the mid-1990s, his subject matter expanded to include mountains and the related subjects he loves. Birds, bears, jackrabbits, coyotes, mountain wildflowers, and the architecture of rural New Mexico rendered in his unique and colorful style never fail to delight the viewer.

The artist divides his time between Taos and Dallas, where he teaches in the art department of Dallas College.

He is represented by Ro2 Art, Dallas, Texas, and David Anthony Fine Art, Taos, New Mexico.