Alva Review-Courier -

After entering her chosen career, Valerie Blackburn discovered a stronger interest in a different direction. She loved to dabble in all kinds of colors and paints as a child, but in her teens she was into dance and playing the violin.

Blackburn earned a bachelor's degree in marketing from Oklahoma State University and began working at a company as an assistant. "I worked side by side with a graphic designer," she said. "That's a lot of what brought me back to art work."

Although she majored in marketing, she realized "I was also thinking of the creative side of marketing – the advertising side of it." To pursue that interest, Blackburn attended the OSU Institute of Technology in Okmulgee, earning an associate's degree, and went into corporate print.

"Corporate print is not the same as fine art," she explained. "But I quickly learned that to be good as a graphic designer or an art director or any of these titles in the corporate world, you really need to hone your artistic skills when you're not working on corporate projects."

Mentors in the industry taught her "you need to work on your fine art skills, your hand skills. We can't just be computerized robots with our art work. We've got to keep learning to build our skills the natural way."

Blackburn grew up in Stillwater and now lives in Guthrie. Some of her recent paintings are of historical buildings there. Although her earlier work was more modern and abstract, she wanted to work on something that might catch the eye of tourists, something they might want to buy. Blackburn is also a history buff, and she enjoyed learning about the historic past of the buildings she was painting.

In addition to paintings, Blackburn's display at Graceful Arts Gallery in Alva includes samples of her photography. Since the featured exhibits during April are titled "Post Modern Eclectic", Blackburn also included some of her modern art.

"The series I brought was a series I made after a trip to Paris," she said. However, the prints were also inspired by a trip she made with a friend to the Philbrook Museum. "They had an Andy Warhol show. All those really bright prints had a big impact on me," she said.

Choosing French phrases from her Paris trip and the Warhol style, "I combined the two – made it really bright and abstract and had a lot of fun with the text in those pieces," she said.

Blackburn's work is on display this month at Graceful Arts Gallery in Alva. You can watch a video of this interview at http://www.AlvaReviewCourier.com.