Valerie Long

Valerie Long was born in 1955 in and has been working at Creativity Explored since 2005.

Graphite, ink, and marker are her preferred media and paper is her surface of choice; fabric is used for its two-dimensional quality as well. Long works mostly in black and white but is not averse to using color.


Her work appears abstract but is often based on the structure of everyday objects. Long’s matter-of-fact, relaxed personality communicates its opposite reflection in her work, where a visual curiosity and intriguing grasp of pattern are filtered through her investigations into the act of seeing.

Tireless hatching and pointillist gestures are the definitive aspects of Valerie’s engagement with drawing. She has made beautiful translations of crystals into stippled, slanting boxes which, through painstaking and delicate repetition, are extracted from the mineral world and placed in ours of motion and light.

In 2010, CB2, one of our community arts partners, chose Long’s work to adorn two pillow designs.