Valerie Thomas was born, raised, and educated in Boston. It was her dream as a child to grow up and become an artist. Nurtured by her father and his lifelong love of art and photography, and her maternal grandfather who was a professional commercial artist, Valerie attended and graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design with a BFA degree in Graphic Design. Her career took her to Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Advertising in Boston as art director. Later, as she raised her children, she worked from home in landscape architecture.
In 1999, Valerie decided to seriously pursue her love of painting. Encouraged by Judy Ryan, of the Fenway Studios and the MFA, she began studies in the Boston School under Robert Cormier (of the Ives Gammell Studio) in classical realism and portraiture and with David Curtis of Gloucester, painting landscapes and still life in oil and pastel.
Valerie’s love of the ocean and the simple architecture found on Cape Cod (where she spent all her summers growing up), Nantucket, and Cape Ann offered her an endless supply of subject matter: “My goal is to try and catch the feeling of that particular day (through composition and color).”
She has been a member of the Nantucket Artists Association for over thirty years and her work has been shown there, at Nantucket Looms, and other Nantucket shops. She is currently showing her work at the Small Wonder Gallery in Camden, Maine and the Pemaquid Gallery in Bristol, Maine.