Sunday, November 10, 2013

Frank DeBruin Valerius

Some time back, I wrote a post about a painting by Valerius (Frank DeBruin Valerius) that I inherited from my mother. Here's a link to that post. The painting in that post remains special to me, in particular because the child's expression, her tear, just seem perfect.

Anyway, Lucie DeBruin, the painter's daughter, kindly sent me some snapshots of other paintings by her father, Frank DeBruin Valerius, who is still painting at the age of 93. Good for him!

The snapshots that Lucie sent me appear below. I did a little fiddling around on them with The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), but obviously I wasn't able to do a professional job. See what you think.

Try clicking on the pictures to get a somewhat larger view. The escape key ("Esc", usually in the upper left of the keyboard) should bring you back here. Your browser may vary.

The first two paintings below are apparently from when Valerius was in Guatemala.



The following painting is of Lucie's grandmother.


I was pleasantly surprised to stumble on the item below. Google is awesome, making old newspapers searchable on the Web. Amazing. Click the image for a larger view of my "clipping", or  here's a link to Google's archive of that edition of the Miami Daily News.


Now that I know Valerius' full name, I did a Google search (1) (2). The first hit I looked at was this, then this:


Then I found another clipping about the Ike portrait (again thanks to Google's digitizing of old newspapers). Sounds like Frank is a very nice guy.



More power to you Frank! Thanks Lucie!

Cheers from Phoenix. Steve