Val

Val lived her youth and adolescence shuttling between South America, Africa, Europe and France where she was born. Settled in her art studio in Bangkok since 2004, Val seems to have found true freedom in Asia and her international way of life has given her wings.

For ten years, she was an urban professional, working in the Parisian marketing field when she had a fortuitous encounter with clay at the workshop of an artist friend that would change the course of her life forever. The experience was such a revelation that the overwhelming passion she felt then has yet to subside. She literally returned to the earth in touch with her senses becoming one with her material.

Self-taught and instinctual, she spent two years studying in Paris with an artist. During this time, she gained confidence in what her hands and mind could produce. This lonely apprenticeship during ten years gave her the freedom to create, as though formal knowledge would act as a brake or an impediment to her creative impulses.

This powerful impulse asserted itself the first few times she worked the clay. This, together with the desire to prolong the pleasure of creating forms out of nothing, gradually drove her to cut all the ties that restrained her. Val is fond of freedom. She has severed one by one the material, emotional and cultural bonds that prevent her from giving full expression to her need to create.

Val gave herself five years to succeed. It took her only two to become independent and make a living out of her art. Her professional bonds were the first to be cut. She left her job as a marketing manager, bravely giving up the security of a generous salary to indulge her passion. Then she broke away from her geographical and cultural ties, leaving France to open a sculpting studio in Bangkok, a bustling Asian metropolis where she has found inspiration and where everything seems possible.

Her work of art is a symbol of her investigation into the nature of the human condition. She has rejected the punishment of a monotonous life. This is the way she follows to seek answers to the questions inherent in all human existence.

Val works with bronze – an ancient metal which has been used by artists for centuries – to take up the torch of the eternal questioning of the meaning of life. The proximity with the foundry in Thailand has proved to be the fertile soil that has nourished her new-found freedom. To work on her sculptures that are more and more monumental and meet her international success, Val has designed her new sculpture studio in Bangkok, surrounded by her own team to assist her in her achievements. This rebirth of enthusiasm has enabled to find fulfillment in total peace and serenity. It is as if, here, everything was preordained, and all she needed to do was follow the signs and listen to the creative impulses within.