Velvet Tetrault

About the Artist

I have been painting for 45 years, since I was 17. I always loved colors. I started out making images on linoleum and printing them. By the time I was 19, I was enthralled with realistic Science Fiction art. My favorite artists were Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, and Salvador Dali. My first paintings on canvas were people from SF stories that I wrote. I liked the fact that the images were out of my imagination, but I wasn’t pleased with my inability to paint what I saw in my imagination.

After taking some art courses at night, I started watching PBS painting shows. This led me to painting landscapes. My day job as a software engineer left me little time to paint, but I did so in whatever spare time I had. I continued to paint from my imagination.

In the early 90’s, I started watching Jerry Yarnell and Helen Van Wyk on TV. I was still painting landscapes, but I also added some still life paintings to my efforts. In 1998, I became acquainted with decorative and tole painting. I spent several years going to workshops and studying videotapes of different artists.

When I felt that I had gone as far as I could with the decorative painting of that era, I began experimenting with mixed media. That included experimenting with painting my pets’ portraits.

Eventually, I expanded to painting still life from setups that I created in my painting studio. I tried to make the images as realistic as possible.

I continued painting still life and landscapes until 2015. During late 2015 I began painting fantasy, especially Alice in Wonderland. In 2016 I shifted from Fantasy paintings to Allegorical Paintings. I also studied Art History and Anatomy for Artists for 1+ years, along with teaching anatomy to artists at WHAM and Palo Verde Art Club.

By 2017, I had begun painting birds. I still paint birds, but with florals and scrolls. I have been studying casual florals and bird painting for the past two years with David Jansen. I have dozens of videos on painting flowers and birds. While continuing painting those subjects, I have also been studying and painting portraits, and the color and tones in the highlights and shadows. However, on the horizon, I am again reviewing anatomy as I revisit my first love: Science Fiction/Fantasy art. I have been imagining SF scenes that I would love to paint, but I want the scenes to be photorealistic. I am finishing up a few paintings, and then I will begin, in earnest, to paint those long awaited images from my imagination.