Valerie Graves was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Fine Art at the prestigious Taos Invites Taos Show
at the Taos Fall Arts Festival by the Taos Medical Services Foundation who sponsored the highly acclaimed show.
She joins R.C. Gorman and Agnes Martin in receiving that special honor.
She has won the Best Traditional Painting Award in the Taos Fall Arts Festival for seven years now - along with two Best In Show Awards and the Judges' Award in one year in addition to numerous awards
in other shows nationwide. She is included in many private and museum collections throughout the country.
Valerie Graves is a Master Painter of landscapes, capturing the special light and essence of the mountains,
sagebrush mesas and valleys of the Southwest.
Many have said that her remarkably sensitive and beautiful work is extremely reminiscent of the very best of the early Taos Founder paintings.
Few artists have earned that praise.
Valerie loves New Mexico, the land and light and culture, and she loves animals, birds and wildlife.
The remarkable painting, Taos Pueblo Christmas Eve,
depicts the bonfire lit night with astounding emotion and strength!
She donates a good deal of her time and artistic efforts to help animals including Equine Spirit Sanctuary in Taos, the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada and others. She is a member of the Friends of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, National Audubon Society, and numerous helpful bird-oriented organizations, and is an amateur birdwatcher. Her art collectors primarily purchase purchase her wonderful landscapes, but she loves painting birds and wildlife and will often donate those paintings (and others) to help worthy organizations.
Taos, New Mexico artist, Valerie Graves has a wonderful selection of original paintings available at
Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in Taos.
She invites you to visit the highly acclaimed gallery which has been chosen "Best of Taos" for a number of years,
We have signed prints for sale on the desktop site, too. Please click to see
what is available (updated April, 2015)
We offer secure payment through PayPal where you can use your own credit card or PayPal account for purchases)
The image and power of Taos Mountain and the Taos Valley play a central role in Valerie Graves work, and are portrayed in their many moods and in various seasons. The rich golden light of sunset which highlights the Sangre de Cristos and casts lush, deep purple shadows is vividly captured in her glowing pastels and oils
The quiet softness of The First Light, the delicate infusion of sunlight just before the sun rises, is both a feeling and a realness which Valerie Graves captures in her Early Morning series.
In her Moonlight, Firelight and Nightime series, she successfully and gently paints elusive, almost mystical scenes which are made up of many subtle colors and shadows. She conveys the powerful but quiet interplay of light and shadow, firelight and darkness with her usual, astounding ability.
The remarkable quality and effectiveness of her work lies in the fact that she recreates both the feeling of the place she is painting and the reality of the place she is painting. Critics use the word sensitivity over and over in respect to her work, sensitivity without cliche, without garishness, without dishonesty. The beauty she chooses as subject matter is always conveyed from her heart, spontaneously. Perhaps that is why she can capture what is elusive for almost everyone else.
In addition to landscapes, Valerie Graves also paints some elements of Taos Pueblo and other Indian Ceremonials. She respectfully paints only those permitted aspects of important Native American dances or processions because much of what occurs is sacred. These works are beyond description and beyond praise largely because this is as important to her as the pure and overwhelming beauty which surrounds her.
Taos Mountain, sacred to the Taos Pueblo people and part of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range (meaning Blood of Christ in Spanish, so named for the sunset colors which wash across the entire length of mountains) is a central part of her everyday life.
Valerie Graves won the JUDGES' CHOICE AWARD
at the Fall Arts Festival, Taos Select Show with the painting depicted below of Taos Mountain.
