Valoy Eaton

Valoy Eaton biography

Regional landscape painter Valoy Eaton was born March 29, 1938, in Vernal, Utah. During the Depression, the family moved to Bingham for work in the Kennecott copper mine. When Valoy was five, the family returned to Vernal, where he first started experimenting with art.

During the next few years, Eaton continued to pursue his interest in art but without thinking of the pastime as a possible occupation. 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.

In 1960, after graduation from Brigham Young University, where he studied art and played basketball on scholarship, Eaton moved to California, planning to study at the Art Center in Los Angeles. But a one-year waiting list sent Eaton and his wife back to Utah, where he got a job at Cyprus High School in Magna, Utah, as art teacher and coach. Painting at night, he returned to Brigham Young for more training, working with Dale Fletcher, and receiving his M.A. degree in 1971.

By this time, Eaton was able to quit teaching. In 1975, he took part in the annual exhibit of the National Academy of Western Art. 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 Chicago, Houston, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City.

Called the heir-apparent to Utah landscape artist LeConte Stewart, Eaton believes that truth lies in the reality of natural forms. 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.

Eaton was an executive member of the National Academy of Western Art and a member of the Cowboy Hall of Fame. His work is in the collections of the Brigham Young University School of Law, Provo; Springville Museum of Art, Utah; Fort Worth National Bank, Texas; the J. Evetts Haley History Center, Texas; and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Valoy Eaton presents his work in the book, “In Natural Light: Paintings by Valoy Eaton”, published 2003 by Gibbs Smith Publishing, with a foreword by Senator Hatch, the artist’s cousin, and a biography by Vern G. Swanson, Director of the Springville Museum of Art.

Available painting:

Click on images to enlarge.

“The Blue Gate”
Valoy Eaton
oil  8 1/2″ x 10 1/2″
$1,250

See additional images of “In October”.

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