About the Artist
ARTIST STATEMENT
I grew up American on the French Riviera, raised in the culture, language and light of the south of France, climbing the olive trees at Les Collettes where Renoir had painted before me. I have lived an American life since, built willingly and with love, but something in me never fully left. These paintings are my way of returning. Every canvas is a letter home to the place that formed me, and that I carry still, like a quiet ache.
I paint what I am powerfully drawn to: not what I have chosen, but what has chosen me. A parasol pine silhouetted against the Mediterranean as morning light creeps across the canvas. A lavender field made quietly iconic by a gardener's stone hut at its edge, and by Van Gogh, a patient in the building that overlooks it, ill and still painting Irises and The Starry Night. Colorful, valiant French fishing boats with the full expanse of blue sea and possibility sprawling behind them. And for still life, the sunflower after Van Gogh, the peony, extravagant and radiant, and the apple, after Cézanne ignited my passion for it.
Each of these is only a place for the light to come to rest. It is the light I am always painting.
Morning light resonates most strongly with me. When I see something truly grand, it stays with me long after I have left the scene. I carry a strong visual memory that can replay the full feeling of a moment years later, triggered by nothing more than a photograph. In the south of France I simply stare, committing the scene to memory. Only the sensations, as Cézanne called them. Only the light.
Light is my obsession. Everything else, composition, values, color and brushwork, is in service of it. My focus is capturing believable, fluid natural light, so plentiful and alive in the south of France and along the southern coast of California. Light as a subject is inexhaustible. No two mornings are ever alike. Perhaps that is why Monet returned to his haystacks and Van Gogh to his sunflowers. The light was always the subject. I return to certain scenes myself, painting a version of each with every new collection, partly to relive the pleasure of the place and share it with you, partly for the challenge of capturing a fresh take on the light, and partly because I am still trying to get closer to a sensation I committed to memory long ago. It is a pursuit I expect never to finish.
The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masters are my instructors. Using a pediatrician's eye to observe with precision and to notice what is not being said, I study their paintings, one fundamental at a time. When a painting of my own raises a question, I return to them and look until I understand what they did. Read closely, their work holds nearly every answer a painter needs.
Color is the instrument I use to share the sensations a scene stirs in me, and the essential tool for rendering light, glow and luminosity. I place my darks and lights first, the foundation for capturing light, then mix rich colors extensively before laying down a single stroke, choosing only those that keep the light my values have built.
I use directional strokes to describe the topography of a landscape, the plane changes of a petal, the broken reflections of boat hulls on still water. I build texture deliberately, to catch the light, to give the surface a subtle, tactile presence, and to lead the eye through the pleasures placed throughout the composition.
My deepest hope is that when you stand before one of these paintings, you feel the moment I felt, and that it brings you, however briefly, a measure of peace, and perhaps a little wonder.
Each painting is a letter to you, from wherever light is dancing and worth the telling. Letters from the land of my childhood and adolescence, from its lavender, parasol pines and sea. And soon, new letters from Southern California: from solo drives through the Santa Monica Mountains and stops along the Malibu coast, a landscape already in quiet conversation with Provence.
BIOGRAPHY
Valerie Collymore is an American painter who grew up on the French Riviera and practiced as a pediatrician before she became an artist. She works in oil on linen, in medium and large formats, painting the landscapes, seascapes, fishing boats and still lifes of Provence and the Mediterranean, and more recently the mountains and coast near her home in Los Angeles.
She is exclusively represented by Fountainhead Gallery in Seattle, where her solo exhibition, Letters from the French Riviera, is planned for April 2027. She received an Award of Distinction at the American Impressionist Society's 22nd Annual National Juried Exhibition, and she is a member of the California Art Club and the American Impressionist Society.
She founded the Collymore Oil Painters Atelier, an online mentorship in oil painting, and teaches at Gage Academy of Art.
FROM THE CRITICS
Of the many contemporary plein-air artists I know, Valerie Collymore is the most devoted proponent of true French Impressionism. Her work idealizes everyday scenes through broken color, loose brushwork, and a convincing effect of fluid sunlight. She would be right at home next to Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro.
— Jean Stern, Executive Director Emeritus, The Irvine Museum Collection, University of California, Irvine
In many ways, Collymore carries on the legacy of French Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who shared her love of southern France.
— Bonnie Gangelhoff, Senior Editor, Southwest Art Magazine
Looking at Collymore's paintings, it's easy to imagine that they're engaged in a dialogue with the works of Impressionist master Paul Cézanne.
— Lauren Dubinsky, Southwest Art Magazine
RECOGNITION
Award of Distinction, American Impressionist Society 22nd Annual National Juried Exhibition, Gallery 1516, Omaha
Member, California Art Club, Los Angeles Chapter
Invited Speaker, Frye Art Museum, Seattle
Invited Keynote, Seattle Art Museum
KING 5 Evening, New Day Northwest, Art Zone with Nancy Guppy, ARTbeat Northwest — 2019
GALLERY REPRESENTATION
Fountainhead Gallery, Seattle, Washington
625 W. McGraw Street, Seattle, WA 98119
(206) 285-4467 · fountainheadgallery.com
Worldwide shipping on all purchased works.
Letters from the French Riviera — Solo Exhibition, April 2027
New works, studio previews, early access for collectors, and invitations to study with me, sent from wherever the light is dancing.
