Valerie Storey, Author - Artist

Watercolor/Mixed Media

Grief isn't scary to me. Neither is it my favorite place to be. But it has an essence of beauty (nostalgia?) I can't ignore, and appreciating what it has to offer has become as natural to me as breathing. The pieces below are part of a series illustrating a new work-in-progress manuscript on the subject of grief combining memoir, poetry, and healing. And as always, I stay hopeful!

I can't recall a time when I wasn't excited by art and in fact I only agreed to attend kindergarten after I was promised my own easel. For many years afterward, however, my main focus was studying art history, but later on I began experimenting with my own drawing and painting when I became interested in book illustration. I've now reached a point where everything seems to intersect: what I paint reflects what I'm currently writing and vice versa. I'm particularly fond of Japanese watercolor with the addition of sumi and other inks, but I also love oil pastels, pastel pencils, and water-soluble graphite.

Recently I was asked if I had an "artist's statement," something I really had to think about as my interests are so varied. In any given week I can be working with charcoal, or designing characters for a "still-in-my-head" picture book, or painting with twigs in my local park. But after giving the matter some serious thought, I think much  of my current work--even the picture book--can be summed up by a single theme:

"I paint the landscape of grief against a background of hope."