Featured Artist Valerie Warner

Artist Valerie Warner radiantly captures heart and soul of the animals she paints. Visit her website to see more of her portfolio.

 

 

What a joy to be included as a featured artist here on Artsy Shark! As I have been an artist all of my life. I really don’t know anything else but trying to recreate the beauty and light of our world with pigments.

 

 

When I was a five-year-old drawing at the kitchen table, I made a street scene complete with perspective with the telephone poles and road getting smaller in the distance. My folks knew they had something fun here.

 

 

Through high school I pretty much attended only art classes. Drawing, painting, sculpting, airbrush, murals— you name it, I loved to do it. An art store still can hold me in its clutches for hours!

 

 

My father was an avid hunter and dog lover. We had litters of puppies, loads of birds to pluck for food and deer to skin. I absolutely loved doing that. Weird, I know.

 

 

With my love of art and my love of animals, here I am painting away for my living and my life’s purpose.

I’ve been lucky enough to paint a portrait of Jane Goodall honoring her 50th anniversary of working with chimps. She feels like family to me and even looks like my clan.

 

 

I use acrylic paint for the underpainting and to create texture, and then use oil paint to finish. This combination hits all of my needs with radiance, depth and glow. People have told me that I truly show the spirit of my subjects. I hope so. Mother Spirit would be pleased.

 

 

I’ve attended many workshops as well as the Academy of Art in San Francisco. After a few semesters at the Academy, I was called in for a meeting with Tom Marshall, a member of the board of directors. He asked why I was there. I told him I was there because I had never been formally educated in art.

 

 

He said that I was already where he hoped his students would get with their education. He told me that to avoid the risk of the school changing my style and method that I should just go home and paint. Wow! I was shocked but pleased, as San Francisco is a long way from my mountain town near Tahoe.

 

 

Now, in my lovely studio in the upstairs of my mountain top home, I create what I hope touches the hearts of my subjects as well as my collectors and viewers.

 

 

I don’t seem to have much luck with entering contests and competitions, so I don’t enter many. Too disheartening. I’m sensitive and need to keep my spirits up in order to render my subjects in the light and love that is their true nature.

 

 

I hope you too enjoy my work. I’m grateful to God for the chance and circumstance to create it. Blessings, Val.

 

Artist Valerie Warner invites you to follow her on Facebook.

 

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