Judy N. Yates was born in McAlester, Oklahoma in 1952. She began painting and selling her art at the age of eleven. During high school, she studied pen and ink, charcoal, pastels, watercolors, oils, and commercial technical drawing (drafting). Several commercial homes were built using her blueprints.  Her early artwork was impressionistic. After more than a decade of painting with oils on canvas, she discovered the art of acrylic on rock. Judy still works with oils or acrylics on traditional canvas of masonite, but the majority of her work is done of broken pieces of natural marble or granite. To achieve her distinctive, self-taught style of fine detail and realism, Judy uses 10 to 15 layers of paint.