Alice Y. Cartwright

Alice Yvonne Yates Cartwright, 81, passed away on November 8, 2019. She was born on February 15, 1938 in Chester, SC to Roxie H. Yates and Robert W. Yates. Alice was a free spirit who expressed herself through her art. She was accomplished in oil painting, acrylics, etchings and stained glass as well as other mediums. Alice developed a love of landscape painting having studied under well-known artist Ann Templeton in the 1960's. It was not unusual for Alice to venture out into the Mojave desert with a sketch pad in one hand and a shovel in the other in case she happened upon something worthy to be in her garden. Alice's husband, Jim, was an Air Force fighter pilot who was stationed all over the US and Europe so the family moved frequently. She took it all in stride, enjoying the travel, learning the history wherever she found herself and painting her way around the world, creating a family life that made being a gypsy feel stable and loving. Her strength was a foundation of family life as her children Laura and Jim never knew how difficult life was for her as an Air Force wife even when her husband was fighting in Viet Nam or stationed abroad without the family. She...[more]

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ver met a stranger and delighted in the varied people who entered her life. Her dinner table often included someone she encountered the day or week before while off on an adventure of one sort or another. Alice continued to create after locating to Austin, Texas by painting the Texas landscape and opening "A Touch of Glass", a successful stained glass studio in south Austin. Her windows grace many homes in the greater Austin area. When Alice found herself a widow, she closed the studio and began to teach art to pre-schoolers at Bethany Lutheran School until muscular dystrophy became a factor. Her strength and courage were tested again and again as she became widowed at age 49, never remarrying. Shortly after she was buried in the stone of her house when it was hit by lightening. Alice refused to be defined by the many other challenges that came after, including being diagnosed in her mid-50's with muscular dystrophy. In the end, MD was the one challenge that set her earthly body free. Fly free Alice, fly free. She was preceded in death by her husband, James W. Cartwright, her parents, and her sister Mary. Alice is survived by daughter Laura Cartwright and husband Clay Harris, son Jim Cartwright, sister Jane Alexander. Visitation will be held from 6:00 - 8:00pm on Thursday, November 14, 2019 at Harrell Funeral Home, 4435 Frontier Trail in Austin, TX. Funeral services will be held at Bethany Lutheran Church at 11am on Friday, November 15th followed by a short reception. Internment ceremony will be at 1pm at Cook Walden Forest Oaks Cemetery in Austin.