Valton Tyler Figurative Paintings

Industrial surrealist painting that is framed in a wooden frame. The work is signed by the artist. Dimensions without Frame: H 10.25 in x W 10.25 in. Artist Biography: Tyler was born in 1944 in Texas City, on the gulf coast of Texas, a town dominated by a large oil refinery. His father ran an auto-body repair shop and was a skilled mixer of colors for car exteriors. Shortly after Valton's third birthday, a freighter in the port, loaded with more than 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate (fertilizer), ignited and exploded, setting off massive fires as other ships, a nearby chemical plant and the refinery went up in flames. The blast shattered windows as far away as Houston and was felt 100 miles to the northeast, in Louisiana. "I was an infant but I remember it very well," Tyler says of what became known as the Texas City Disaster, the worst industrial incident of its kind in U.S. history. He says: "My parents thought it was the end of the world; the flames were bright red at the bottom of the fire, which covered the flat landscape, and black at the top, stretching high into the sky. I still have nightmares." A few years after the disaster, Tyler's father, who had received electric-shock treatments for depression before Valton was born, became an alcoholic and slipped deeper into mental-emotional gloom. Valton, who claims he had an out-of-body experience at the time of the Texas City fires and, later, as a teenager, was visited by an angel who pinned him to his bed (but pressed no special message upon him), would eventually drop out of high school. Later, he earned a high school diploma after moving with his mother and sister to Dallas; his older brother, Robert, an architectural draftsman, had already settled there. Painting Exhibitions: 2011 Dallas Art Fair, Fashion Industry Gallery, Dallas, Texas (Valley House Gallery) 2010 Valton Tyler and Miguel Zapata: Beauty and Power, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, Texas 2010 Channeling Other Worlds: Contrasting paintings, drawings, and prints by Dallas artist Valton Tyler with Tribal Works from around the World, a collaborative exhibition between Valley House Gallery and Shango Galleries, Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Dallas, Texas 2009 Wish! Auction, Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, Dallas, Texas 2009 Thank You Fort Worth: An Appreciation from Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Group Exhibition, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, Texas 2008 College Art Association's 96th Annual Conference, Adam's Mark Hotel...

In The New York Times Arts in America column, Edward M. Gomez wrote of Valton Tyler, "visionary seems the right word for describing his vivid, unusual and technically refined paintin...