Valerie Armstrong
Woodbridge, England | Mixed Media Painter | Resident in 2024
Valerie Armstrong is a mixed-media painter working in acrylics and cold wax/oil. She is based mainly in Woodbridge on the beautiful East-Anglian coast of England. However her summers are spent in her inherited house in Marie; a Medieval mountain village in the Alpes Maritimes in France. There, where the air is pure and the light is soft, she has a beautiful large studio which overlooks the village and the mountains where she is able to work on large canvasses. It is a wild and lovely environment that holds many stories.
Valerie has always been an artist. She did a degree in textiles, (fibre arts), in the late 1960's, early 70's. Following that she obtained a post graduate qualification in Art therapy, practicing as an art therapist in a hospital, a school and a prison. She has also been a life long traveller and lived in 3 other European countries and in Israel when she was still young. After her children were born, as a way to work from home when they were at school, she began a business painting murals, painted folding screens, and furniture to commission. As they grew up she became a printmaker and a painter. Now painting, exhibiting and some workshop teaching occupies all of her time.
“In the mornings we woke up to the clip clop of horses hooves on the cobble stones outside. The painters were treated to the most lovely outside studio space under arches in the garden. With electricity laid on we were able to work into the night. I was so pleased to be able to work either in privacy, or in the company of other like-minded people when I chose. We took part in monthly salons where we all had the opportunity to share and sell the work we were doing with the public.”
