Valentine Nazarian Wolly was born in Tehran and raised in New York City. She received her undergraduate degree from Queens College before moving to the Washington, DC area, where she later received her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from the George Washington University. Her works encompass all mediums and have been displayed in galleries in Michigan, Colorado, and Washington, DC, and hang in the permanent collections of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, NY, the Children’s National Health System, the Kalamazoo International Airport, the Montgomery County, MD, Department of Recreation, and in numerous private collections.
She explained her approach to capturing the beauty of what she saw: My work centers on connections, interactions, and relationships between figures, objects and environments. My figurative themes are often based in public spaces – city streets, office/studio spaces, museums, airports, train stations and rail facilities. Reflection, repetition, and pattern are recurring elements in a large body of my work. Whatever the subject matter, my primary objective is to capture the essence of a moment in time, rather than every detail. The “subject” may or may not be recognizable; the true subject is the beauty of the combination of movement, color, shape and form.
