Visual Language Magazine Contemporary Magazine Vol 3 no 8

VL Artspan Studio Visit Valerie Travers
“I work standing up, since I paint almost exclusively
on canvas,” Valerie Travers says, describing
her artistic process. “But then, I hardly sit
down in the course of a day in any case. Once
I’m absorbed and a painting is going well, I lose
all sense of time. I tend to keep going until I drop!”
Travers can trace that tenacity back more than
five hundred years, through a family tree that took
root in Guernsey, a tiny island off the coast of
Normandy, in the 1400s. A bailiwick of the British
Crown, the land covers barely 30 square miles
floating in the English Channel, but it has provided
all the foundation Travers needed to become
the artist, and the person, she is today.
“I have always loved water,” she says—little wonder,
as it surrounds her on all sides. From growing
up on the island, she believes, “my love of the
sea is firmly embedded in my very being, and in
my work. As a child I spent the summer on the
beach, swimming and making sandcastles with
moats, trying desperately to stop the walls from
crumbling when the tide rushed in.”
Those toppling sandcastles were an early bellwether
for what awaited her when she first moved
into her current house on Guernsey. “I am living
in my Great Aunt Alice’s home,” she notes. Travers
bought the fixer-upper from family, feeling a
connection to the homestead, and has lived there
more than 28 years. “I was very close to Auntie
Alice. She adored animals, loved her garden, and
was a dressmaker by trade… we just fitted together
so well. So being here means such a lot to
me, and I know that she is pleased I’m here, looking
after things as she would wish and making it
into the home it is today.”
The house, and the island itself, seems imbued
with the long family history that has shaped Travers
and her work. “I have the old values and the
sense of belonging to this island, and always will,”
she says. From far back, her family had always
been growers, farmers, and fishermen, living
off the food they caught or cultivated. Her great
grandfather was once awarded a cup for a prize
cow by no less a luminary than Queen Mary.
http://www.valerietravers.com
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After the war, her RAF veteran father wed her
mother and bought a home with greenhouses.
“It was a hard life,” she recalls. “They worked all
hours, as all of my relatives did, but the fun they
had and the laughs they shared I will always remember.
Hard work doesn’t mean hardship, does
it Sometimes, the simple life is the best.”
The family penchant for hard work pushed her to
excel in her studies, attend night school for shorthand
and typing, and try her hand at a variety of
careers, from surgeon’s P.A. to a secretary for a
legal firm and the police force. “But there was always
something missing,” she says. “I knew I was
not totally fulfilled.” Her childhood creativity—explorations
into art, music, crafts, equestrianism,
and other activities—had not yet found a way to
bloom through the concrete of adult life.
Perhaps it was her lifelong love of the water that
first prodded her to dab a brush into watercolors.
“It was a ‘Eureka’ moment,” she says of the occasion,
now more than two decades past, when
she first took up painting seriously. “I had found
the missing link at last. I fitted it in between looking
after my children and running the home, and
always found time to pick up a brush, even if it
meant starting my day an hour earlier.”
When watercolors began to lose their luster, she
moved on to oils, which she still employs enthusiastically.
Though not initially enamored of pastels,
she later gave them another chance and found
that they were the perfect tool for capturing the
images and emotions she wanted to express on
the canvas. While she currently focuses on acrylics
and oils, she is quick to point out that every
medium has its advantages
“I believe that artists reach for colors intuitively,”
she says of selecting her tools. “In my opinion,
being self-taught has allowed my expression to
come through at a steady pace and gradually develop
into my own personal style.” Though she
feels she is still developing as an artist, she notes,
“I do enjoy painting a variety of subjects, but there
is a definite leaning toward certain colors and the
way I apply paint.”.
Right: Stairway to Heaven