VALOY EATON

This fine landscape, animal, and figure painter of rural subjects was born in the eastern Utah town of Vernal. Raised in Bingham, Utah, he went on to study art at Brigham Young University before further training at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. Returning to Utah, Eaton credits former BYU teacher Dale Fletcher (with whom the younger artist then painted) as the one who "brought me back to the truth." That "truth" was a vision of Eaton's Utah home environment, and this painter's nostalgic view of it has produced many loyal followers of his work in subsequent years. Once a teacher at Magna High School, today he makes his home in Midway, Utah. Eaton's style in watercolors and oils especially is realist and color impressionist, and his landscape subject is often a form of farm country and rural life with wonderfully drawn figures placed here and there within the scenes; his work makes the city dweller forget just how hard farming so frequently is. (b. March 29)

Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 75.