ACO Artist Discussion with Shawn Yancy

Shawn Yancy is a multiple Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist and a Washington, DC news anchor with more than three decades of experience telling other people’s stories. Through her art, she turns that same storytelling lens inward, using paint to explore her own lived experiences. She has been creating since childhood, drawn to color, movement, and emotional expression at an early age. Abstract art serves as both refuge and release from the heaviness of the daily news cycle, allowing space for reflection, honesty, and creative freedom. Working primarily in acrylic, her work explores joy, tension, resilience, and the complexity of life’s layers. She was recently honored to be a featured artist at American University’s Museum at the Katzen Art Center as part of the ‘Women Artists of the DMV: A Survey Exhibition’.