Valerie Berkely

Play Misty for Me, Abstract Oil Painting

2023

Artist Comments
Foggy mists wrap the shore in the early morning, shrouding the waves as they vanish into the horizon. The soft, pale colors imbue the scene with a soothing and dreamlike ambiance. Artist Valerie Berkeley uses her fingertips to apply transparent oil hues, giving the artwork a watercolor sensibility.

About the Artist
Valerie Berkely uses her finger tips as brushes to create her abstract paintings. For Valerie, the art is all about the process, the paint, her mood, and the moment. She admires the artist Wolf Kahn, who once said, “the picture is the conclusion of an experiment in which the hint of an image becomes actuality." Like Kahn, Valerie’s paintings combine pictorial landscapes with painterly abstraction. The vibrant primary colors capture the hues of the sun rising and setting, and the texture of her fingers across the surface divides sea, land, and sky. There is something very dreamy about these works, exemplified by their color, texture, and atmospheric quality. Valerie’s first “art epiphany” was seeing Seurat's La Grande Jatte at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Bowled me over! I actually fell down. And I knew I was to become a painter.”

Words that describe this painting: shore, waves, horizon, mist, fog, soft, pale, muted, water, sea, ocean, cool, fingerpainting, abstract, seascape, oil painting, blue

Play Misty for Me
Valerie Berkely
Oil painting on cradled wood panel
Finished edges
Ready to hang
One-of-a-kind
Signed on front and back
2023
16 in. h x 20 in. w x .75 in. d
3 lbs. 3 oz.