Valerie Mangion

To purchase artwork by Valerie, contact her directly at:

email: VMangion@mwt.net or visit her website at: www.ValerieMangion.com

Tell Valerie that you saw her beautiful work on The Gallery of Wisconsin Art website!

Artist Statement and Biography

I have been drawing and painting animals since I was four. For me, loving, caring for and painting animals make living worthwhile. Through my art, I strive to be a voice for the voiceless; I want animals to be seen.

Sometimes labeled as a visionary artist, I think of myself as a midwest magic sur-regionalist. I believe my best work successfully balances both seriousness and humor.

Biography:

I was raised in two Chicago suburbs, Glen Ellyn and Long Grove, IL.  I hated high school, so I graduated at the end of my junior year and went right to college in Champaign/Urbana, where I got a BFA.

After college, I lived in the city of Chicago for a couple years. I was lucky enough to join Thursday night figure drawing classes at (then) Loop College led by one of my favorite artists of all time, Seymour Rosofsky. He was part of the “Monster Roster” affiliated with the Chicago Imagists. He died in 1981.

After my father died, also in 1981, I moved home with my mother briefly. She bought me a car, which allowed me to move to Seattle. I left my paintings behind but everything else I owned at that time fit into my AMC Concord station wagon. I miss those days of owning almost nothing!

I lived in Seattle for eight years, during which time I became an animal rights activist and vegetarian. I acquired my first pet rat in the Emerald City. I did a lot of angry, political paintings about man’s inhumanity to animals. I got married to a native Northwesterner and later divorced. I moved back to the Midwest to attend graduate school at UW-Madison, where I received my MFA in 1993.

I met my second husband during graduate school. We eventually bought a 58-acre farm in the Driftless region and embraced country life. We’ve lived outside of Boaz, WI for 29 years, with varying numbers of cats, dogs and horses to keep us company.

I worked out of a dark, freezing cold (or boiling hot), insect-infested granary building for 15 years. I loved that studio. But I am much happier in the spacious, light-filled studio that we added on to our 102-year old farmhouse in 2010.

Valerie was featured on the cover and in an article in Wisconsin People & Ideas, the magazine of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in Spring of 2016. Click HERE to see the article online.