Val Stokes

Country Joys

New Zealand artist Val Stokes has been drawing since she was four years old. Being largely a self-taught artist, she spent her early years submitting images to magazines and art competitions. As she began to achieve success with her art, that gave her the momentum necessary to continue and pursue a career in advertising and graphics.

After marriage to another artist and the birth of two children, Val decided to work out of a home studio until the children were grown. While she continued doing freelance work, she began to focus on her true artistic passion, which was painting realistic subjects, submitting the works to juried shows and displaying her art in galleries. Favorite subjects included rustic landscapes, animals, cats, flowers, garden, whimsical images and abstracts painted in a wide variety of media.

For over the past decade Val has worked, and exhibited regularly, from her Glen Lynne home studio and gallery in Hamilton, New Zealand, a retirement dream that she and her husband realized and enjoyed together.

The artist is enthusiastic about painting botanical subjects and estimates that over her long artistic career she has painted more than 1,000 botanicals, including flowers and gardens. She recently completed more than 130 commissioned works in this subject field. Her work has also been reproduced on calendars, cards and related products.

The works shown on this site and represented for art licensing by Porterfield's are painted primarily in oils, using liquid media on a very smooth board, which allows for strong, clear colors. A love of gardening and photographing flowers provides a strong basis for much of her garden work.

Nowadays Val paints daily in a large studio she shares with her son Lyndon, who is fast gaining recognition in the art world. Her youngest grandson is also a regular visitor to the gallery, so there is a strong chance the Stokes legacy will continue well into the future. We hope it does!

Porterfield's is delighted to be able to represent the impressive artistic works of this extremely versatile and creative artist to all fields of commercial art licensing.

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