Interviewed in Arts Review in March 1982, Valerie Thornton described how she found the direction for her art: 'There was a moment when I was still floundering around at the Regent St Poly. I arrived early at Charing Cross Underground to meet a friend, and there I saw an exhibition of enormous photographs of old churches. It was like a religious conversion for me, the crumbling ruins seemed so powerful. Next morning, I think it was in 1951,1 was up at 7 drawing a bombed church, till 9.30 when I had to go off to the Poly. Now, the subjects which turn me on still come in great waves - sometimes its vernacular, sometimes, as now, its Romanesque sculpture.'
Thornton painted, drew and made prints. Studying in 1954 at Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris awoke in her an awareness of the potential of printmaking to evoke the weathered, textured stones of buildings. She described how on first arriving to work with Hayter 'I found bubbling acid, black hands, and it was all very liberating'. She traveled in Italy. Spain and France, making studies of buildings. The Tate Collection houses a series of five prints of architecture, from the French town of Amboise (1973) to a Norfolk farm (1977) and also the oil painting Bominarco (The Abruzzi) (1988), in which the effect of time and wear on a wall painting is subtly rendered.
Thornton admired Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland and Winifred Nicholson. She owned some of Nicholson's work and the two women formed a close friendship. Thornton had solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Print Club (i960), the Redfern Gallery (1992) and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1994-5). She was a founder member of the Printmakers Council. |
