Mesa Verde
Valerie Thornton (1931 - 1991)
Etching and aquatint
1965-
About the work
- Location
-
Country: Other
City: other locations abroad
This etching is one of several works produced by Thornton in 1964–65 while she was in residency in New York, capturing her impressions of the city’s grey skyscrapers and arid sandy landscapes on desert excursions, including Navajo Canyon in Arizona. Speaking of her working methods, Thornton said:The starting point is always a response to something seen – usually an architectural subject. It may be a cathedral, a stone wall or a skyscraper ... The attraction of architecture as a subject is its essential stillness and order. -
About the artist
Born in London, Valerie Thornton was evacuated to Canada during the Second World War, before returning in 1944, following which she trained in art at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting from 1949. In 1954 she undertook an eight-month residency with S. W. Hayter at the Atelier 17 in Paris. On her return to England she purchased her first etching press. After a six-week grand tour of Italy in 1955, she succeeded Howard Hodgkin as Assistant Art Teacher at Charterhouse School, also teaching at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End, Hadleigh. She did a ten month residency at the Pratt Graphic Art Center Workshop in New York and a trip to Mexico in the early 1960s, where she experimented with woodcuts. In 1965, she became a founder-member of the Printmakers’ Council. Thornton moved to the Minories in Colchester in 1966, after marrying Michael Chase, who had been appointed curator there. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter/Etchers and Engravers in 1970. In 1974, she settled in Chelsworth, West Sussex; thereafter followed regular summer working trips to Spain, France and Italy in search of Romanesque material for her etchings.
-
Explore
- Places
- United States of America, Colorado
- Subjects
- abstract, landscape C20th
-
Details
- Title
- Mesa Verde
- Edition
- 10/30
- Date
- 1965
- Medium
- Etching and aquatint
- Acquisition
- Purchased from Editions Alecto, 1966
- Inscription
- below image: 10/30 / Valerie Thornton
- GAC number
- 7483