VALDA BAILEY

VALDA BAILEY

17 stories

I make art using photography and mixed media. My practice leans into imaginative abstraction, exploring what happens when a camera is freed from the burden of simply replicating what's in front of the lens. I teach at https://fyv.art

Pedra d Ouro, Portugal

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Latest Stories

VALDA BAILEY

Someone was Here

I care enormously about how things look. Design matters to me. Individuality, avoiding cookie-cutter perfection. The crisp white modernism of our age is something I struggle with. Nevertheless, for years I followed the usual advice about photographers’ websites. Keep the background white, or, if you want to be a little bit adventurous, grey; keep the type small and the personality elsewhere. Nothing must interfere with the photographs. The work is the thing, and it should speak for itself. So t

VALDA BAILEY

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(or is it?) Graphic design. Fonts. Colour. Margins. As a young teenager they held a strange fascination for me. On reflection, graphic design is a job that would have suited me well. However, as is so often the case, life took me down a different road and any fond ambitions I had of kerning words at midnight, moving logos three mm to the right then back again, or deciding which curly apostrophe was the right one for a Sunday remained a distant dream. The fork in my career path did not stop me

VALDA BAILEY

What's in a Name?

Why we chose Pedra do Ouro over the Algarve, the awkward language of expats and immigrants, and the appeal of a less polished life on Portugal’s Silver Coast.

VALDA BAILEY

50 Shades

Fifty grey fragments lifted from the Silver Coast – sea, sand, cloud, foam, the occasional sulky bit of almost-blue

VALDA BAILEY

Costa de Prata

Not silver as in jewellery – silver as a condition of the light. On the pewter, pink and inky moods of Portugal's Atlantic light, and starting again in a roofless studio.

VALDA BAILEY

A Forest, Not a Plantation.

The internet has been farmed hard. On Ghost, the Fediverse, and choosing a tangled corner of the field over the polished plantation.

VALDA BAILEY

Estrago

A treehouse that kept its roof, a house that didn't, and a box of spoiled paper that is evolving daily. Estrago, at Studio Atlantic.

VALDA BAILEY

Why Water?

Water is the subject where looking-to-keep is hopeless and looking-to-be-present is the only option.