Description
Stock AA1218
‘Melbourne in Winter’
Oil on Canvas
1980s
Valerie Marie Therese O’Neill
14/9/1929 – 8/8/2010
Valerie was born on the 14 September 1929. She grew up in Wright Street, Middle Park, and attended the Brigidine Convent, Kilbride, on Beaconsfield Parade.
As a young women she demonstrated prodigious artistic talent and studied under Archie and Amalie Colquhoun, contemporaries of Max Meldrum and later, at the National Gallery School under Sir William Dargie, eight times winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture.
Realising that reliance on painting to earn a living wage was not possible in the Australia of the 1950s and 1960s Valerie had an adventurous career as a diplomatic secretary in Australian overseas missions.
After further diplomatic postings in the 1970’s Valerie settled into life in Bangkok where she painted portraits of several of the Thai princesses which now hang in the Royal Palace and of the Prime Minister, Thanom Kittikachorn.
Valerie returned to Melbourne in the late 1970’s and took occasional classes for students.
She was a character, full of dash and colour. A great raconteur, an urbane and educated woman whose talent was not sufficiently recognised.
She spent her remaining years in a nursing home where the walls were brightened by a number of portraits and still lives she painted.