A boy walks toward a line of horses in Valoy Eaton’s oil painting, “At Attention.” It’s a face-off, and the boy is grossly outnumbered. The herd stands on dry, late fall grasses, painted in fast, impressionistic strokes. The trees are similarly given a loose treatment, with the finer branches rendered in wonderful blurred movement. Eaton has painted the boy and horses in finer detail—thought still with deft looseness in his mark-making. The expressions of his subjects are given fine attention, especially the two main players in the face-off. They are also haloed in subtle highlights that emphasize their prominence in this unfolding drama. “I happened to be an interested spectator while this boy tried to catch his horse,” Valoy Eaton writes. “I didn’t think his chances were very good because horses in a group like that seem to inspire mischief in each other. Anyway, in the painting I tried to capture the exact moment when the horses would either stay or run. The boy’s chances would have been improved with a bucket of grain.”
Valoy Eaton made a career pivot in the 1960s. He was teaching high school art and coaching sports in the Salt Lake Valley when he decided he needed to really commit to painting. He would come home from his job and work on art evenings and weekends. He started getting attention from galleries and collectors after winning best of show in the Utah State Fair for the professional division. After going back for a masters in painting and design from BYU, he was able to shift his career entirely; he quit teaching and became a full-time artist. Since then he has had a one-person retrospective show at the Springville Art Museum, was voted into a lifetime membership of the National Academy of Western Art, and was appointed by the governor of Utah to represent visual arts for the state on the Utah Arts Council. His portrait hangs in Abravanel Hall in honor by the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce for his contribution to the arts. He was also presented with the Utah Governor’s Mansion Artist Award. His watercolors, oils, and prints have also been purchased by hundreds of collectors. Eaton writes that he believes that “some of the most profound subjects are found in everyday occurrences when living close to nature.”
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