People dancing Painting

Val’s expressive paintings share her fascination with colour, contrasts and shapes. A self-taught painter, her style is always evolving because she loves to experiment with new materials or different techniques. Each painting starts with intuitive mark-making, evolves with layers of mixed media, glazes or collage, and is then refined after a review to consider composition and design. Colour is always a dominant aspect of each painting and she usually works on several paintings with a common motif and the same limited colour palette. Val draws inspiration from diverse sources. It may be something tangible in the world around us; the colours, culture, atmosphere, buildings or scenery of somewhere she's visited; or the words of a poem or song. A recent series was inspired by the poem 'Evolution' by Rebecca Elson. She runs a local community art group and is an active member of Herts Visual Arts Forum. Her painting ‘Reflections 4’ was Highly Commended in the SAA Artist of the Year competition in 2021.