One of Valerie’s earliest memories is of herself decorating the walls her family’s Southern California bungalow with her drawings of everyone she knew and loved. Fifty years later, now firmly planted in Southern Massachusetts; her childhood passion has remained a constant throughout her life.
Valerie received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from Philadelphia College of Art. In 1988 she came to Providence, RI for a visit, fell in love with the area, as well as a toy designer who resided there, and never really left. For the next 20 years, Valerie ran a free-lance design company, specializing in illustration and toy design, still painting portraits and figures whenever she could. For the last decade, Valerie has been able to devote herself to painting fulltime, exhibiting her work, and currently has a thriving commissioned portrait business. She has had recent shows at the Attleboro Arts Museum, and at Providence Art Club, where she is an exhibiting member.
What interests Valerie the most, and what she has always strived for in painting portraits and figures, is to portray aspects of the subjects’ humanity, the real poetry that is part of the person.
Skilled at painting in several media, Valerie chooses the material for the feeling she would like to convey. She loves watercolor for its’ spontaneity, and loves to paint with it alone, or as an underpainting to give her pastels a lively base that she overlays with intense pigment.
