"I have always loved playing with color" says Velda.  By the age of eight, she had put away her "beloved crayons" and began taking art lessons from Christine Pickens in Hendersonville, North Carolina for the next six years.  Her next concentration was on still life and landscape, painting with artisans Sergio Santos and Amy Rickert.

   Much of Velda's daily routine these days is taken up by painting, one way or another.  Velda is most often found donning with her black and paint covered painters jacket  in her studio/gallery in Cashiers, North Carolina, Blue Valley Gallery.  If Velda isn't engaged in teaching some of her own dedicated students, she will most likely be engaged in another of her own paintings.

Velda's mastery of technique and her understanding of color and light is evident in every composition.