A. Valoy Eaton
Antelope

The Artist - Armon Valoy Eaton

Valoy Eaton has been called the heir-apparent to Utah landscape artist LeConte Stewart. Eaton is a contemporary regional landscape painter (meaning a landscape painter who paints scenes of a specific area) who was born March 29, 1938, in the small town of Vernal, Utah. Although Eaton's father owned and ran an auto repair shop, his spare time was spent with his wife playing popular and western music in a dance band. From his parents, Eaton gained an appreciation of music and the arts.

During the Depression, the family moved to Bingham for work in the Kennecot copper mine, and there they lived in a cramped apartment so close to the slag pile that once, rocks tumbled off the pile and into a neighboring apartment. When Valoy was five, the family returned to Vernal, where he first started experimenting with art. He can still remember as a young child drawing three converging lines and noticing how the drawing seemed to "jump off the paper." Having discovered perspective quite by accident, Eaton couldn't stop drawing from that time on.

During the next few years, Eaton continued to pursue his interest in art but without thinking of the pastime as a possible occupation. However, while wandering the fields around Vernal, spending time at his mother's home in La Point, and staying with his grandmother near the Uinta Mountains, Valoy grew to love the natural beauties of rural Utah.

His first commission as an artist was in fifth grade when he was asked to create a Santa, sleigh, and reindeer for the school roof. However, sports soon became an important contender for Eaton's time„his 6'3" frame and natural ability eventually taking him to Brigham Young University on a basketball scholarship in 1956. For the next four years, Valoy majored in painting and drawing but spent most of his time playing ball. During this time, he married his high-school sweetheart, Ellie King, whom he credits with his success as an artist today.

After graduation from Brigham Young University, Eaton moved to California, planning to study at the Art Center in Los Angles. Finding out that the waiting list was a year long, the Eatons promptly moved back to Utah. Here, Eaton got a job at Cyprus High in Magna, Utah, as art teacher and coach. Busy all day, he came home and painted, sometimes all night. Although he made significant progress during this time, he soon felt a need for more formal training and enrolled in a master's program at BYU, where he worked with Dale Fletcher. In 1971, he completed his Master of Art, having developed a secure style based on his belief that truth lies in the reality of natural forms.

Teaching at Cyprus High and painting at night became less and less satisfactory, and when in 1971, Eaton was making as much money from painting as from teaching, he and Ellie went house hunting in Wasatch county. Just outside Midway they found a three-acre piece of land with a somewhat rundown farmhouse. Three days later it was theirs.

Having time to paint made a huge difference in Eaton's art, and by the age of 33 he had dealt with the typical technical problems that beset young painters. By 1975 he was accepted in the prestigious annual exhibit of the National Academy of Western Art. Critics soon noticed Eaton, and in 1976, he was awarded the silver medal in the Royal Western Watercolor Show in Oklahoma City. He has since exhibited throughout the United States in places such as Chicago, Houston, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and of course, Salt Lake City.

Valoy Eaton uses a wide variety of techniques, believing the results are what is important. This variety of technique is one reason Eaton's paintings avoid any taint of formula or repetition. He believes it is vital to paint as a spontaneous expression of enthusiasm and involvement. He says he would rather dig a ditch than paint a subject he isn't interested in. He avoids preliminary sketches so he won't lose the mental image he wants to create. He starts with a light brush drawing on the board and builds the masses gradually, stroke by stroke, tightening the images gradually, in what he terms "A series of corrected mistakes."

Eaton's subjects continue to be simple statements about the land. Unlike some artists, who rely on the grandeur and power of their subjects, Eaton says he wants his paintings to convey his feelings about his own backyard. He paints from his own experience, and the quiet beauty of his paintings is an expression of the inner man--humble, family-oriented, honest, and calm. That gentle power, coupled with years of hard work and determination, have resulted in artistic success.

Eaton is an executive member of the National Academy of Western Art and an established artist in the Cowboy Hall of Fame. His work is sold throughout the United States at galleries in Wyoming, Salt Lake City, Tucson, and Oklahoma City. His work resides in important private and public collections such as those belonging to The Brigham Young University School of Law, The Springville Museum of Art, the Fort Worth National Bank in Texas, The J. Evetts Haley History Center in Texas, Mr. Charles Blackburn of Shell Oil, and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.

The Art

VALOY EATON (1938-    ) Midway/Vernal, UT
Antelope  1971
oil on masonite, 48" x 72" (124 x 215 cm)
Gift of Dr. Hugh and Carol Hogel collection of Salt Lake City, SMA 1999.038

This large oil was painted by the artist when he was leaving his secure job as a high school art teacher in Magna, Utah. He had promised his wife he would not quit his "day job" until he had made at least as much money from his art as he did his teaching for two straight years. As one of only about three fully professional Utah artists at the time, Eaton was embarking on a risky career change. But as this painting clearly shows, Eaton was certainly qualified to be a full-time artist.

He had just joined NAWA (National Association of Western Artists), an organization established to promote realistic art with a western flavor. He won his most prestigious awards throughout the 1970s and by the end of the decade had established himself as one of America's premier landscape painters. He moved from Magna, to Midway, and back to his ancestral home in Vernal, Utah.

Vernal and eastern Utah were not as spectacular in landscape as some other places, but they formed the key influence on Eaton's work. Unlike other artists, he did not seek out grandeur of mountain summits or the sublimity of the grand canyon lands. Rather, he sought inspriation in the high deserts, the barren washes, in humble sagebrush and tumbleweed. An occasional rancher leading a horse or a pair of country boys on dusty farm roads observed by a blackbird was all the high drama he needed to capture the mood of rustic Utah.

Not fancy but effective, Eaton captures the spirit of rural Utah with great sensitivity and muscular power. Half impressionist and half tonalist, his painting have qualities of both traditional and modern art. That perfet pitch won for him the praise given to an artist who truly understands who he is. Antelope has the rich thick pigmentation of a brush fully loaded with paint but not thinned with painting medium or turpentine. It is "laid on" with broad brushstrokes reminiscent of the great French Naturalists of the nineteenth century (J.F. Millet, G. Courbet, Jules Bastier-Lapage, and Leon Lhermitte).

Eaton "drags" his heavily laden brush both across and with the form of the object he is painting. This gives a sense of weight, something most Utah and American artists have not done. The weight allows his form, light, and color to assert themselves in proper proportion. All these qualities make Antelope a vintage artwork of Valoy Eaton's as well as a major addition to the Springville Museum of Art collection.
 

Concepts
Visual Art Core Curriculum - Utah State Office of Education

Under the Standards of Media, Structures and Functions, and Subjects, Symbols, and Ideas, this print can help the student:

Under the Standard of Context, this print can help the student:

Under the Standard of Connections, this print can help the student:

Under the Standard of Portfolios and Exhibitions, this print can help the student:

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