Hope, joy inform Willson art
Published 11:54 am Monday, March 3, 2008
The Edmonds Arts Festival Museum and Edmonds Arts Commission collaborate this month in presenting the textural paintings of artist Valerie Willson in the museum gallery and display case in the Frances Anderson Center.
“Patterns fascinate me,” Willson said of her paintings. “In growing things and in our lives, the way we address similar issues over and over, but differently as events unfold.” Hope and joy also inform her work. “The way I see it in the continual cycle of living things, and in the way for us as humans, it is a reason to live and yet is such a challenge,” Willson said.
In creating her work Willson starts by gessoeing heavy rag paper on both sides, or by priming a finely crafted wood panel. Beginning with an under painting of a fairly brilliant color she then creates a layer of pattern with linoleum blocks and stencils. At this point she can create a whole layer of color shifts by working over the dry layers of pattern with transparent paint applied thinly with a brayer. With this rich texture as an under layer, free brush work creates an image that evokes plant forms, glimpses of landscape, moments in time. The painting is developed in several layers, allowing the paint to dry between each layer.
Willson received a B.F.A. from the Portland Museum Art School in Portland, Ore. in 1972, having attended the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, N.C.; University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore.; and Southern Oregon College in Ashland, Ore. She taught printmaking at Marylhurst College, Portland Museum Art School and now gives monoprint workshops at Quartermaster Press, the printmaking co-operative she started on Vashon Island in 1994.
With work in numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout the Pacific Northwest, nationally and internationally, Willson’s works have appeared as illustrations in several publications and have won many awards. She has pieces in many public and private collections, including the Portland Art Museum, Safeco Corporation and Fred Meyer Charitable Trust.
Most recently the artist has been selling her work through art festivals across the country. Among others, she has shown at the Cherry Creek Festival in Denver, where her work was used as poster in 1998, the Sausalito Art Festival in Sausalito, the St. Louis Art Festival in St. Louis and the Brookside Art Festival in Kansas City.
