About Me

I now live on the east coast of Scotland near Inverness, but I was born much further north in the county of Caithness - the Lowlands beyond the Highlands.

I always remember drawing in notebooks, or keeping visual images in my head of things I'd observed, or collecting flowers and then pressing them under heavy books, or making shoebox landscapes with collected cones, moss, little thin sticks etc. Because, although me and my sister lived in Thurso, we spent our weekends at my Nana's in Latheronwheel. We could explore up the Strath, along the burn, or down at the shore where there were hidden gullies with massive rocks.

In 2002, I had an illustrated autobiography of my childhood published by Tuckwell Press called: 'GREEN. A Caithness Childhood'. It's out-of-print now, but I think you can still get a copy for 1p from Amazon! I think it may be also available in digital form.

(Tirrywirry is a Caithness word meaning getting in a tizz, being hyper.)

I studied art at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. I loved everything about art school. Then I was known as Val Tarlton. I've taken part in lots of exhibitions and won a prize for a triptych of pastels from the Pastel Society at the Mall Galleries in London.

My work is mostly figurative, involving people from my imagination - sometimes people I've known, and admittedly at other times, it's autobiographical!

I'm interested in capturing feelings, moods and emotions. and I'm also interested in a person's interaction with nature.

Some pieces came under the working title, Interactive Art, where I invited the owner of the work to add some of him/herself to the conversation, via external compartments on the glass. Items could be stored in these compartments and, once folded, they would be out of view and quite secret. The owner could change them as frequently as they liked, keeping the artwork both relevant and fresh to them.

I wanted to explore the idea that I could interact both with my image and the owner of my artwork.

2023 brings with it many more ideas!

Valerie Carr, May 2023