Despite WW II preventing Valerie from taking up a scholarship to L'hote in Paris, she somehow assimilated all that was going on in modernist Europe, where art was strongly influenced by late cubism........So much of Valerie's works were created in cultural isolation, and reside in private collections. Her paintings from that (postwar) period closely parallel the work of her contemporaries - Rah Fizelle, Grace Crowly, Frank Hinder, Grace Crossingham-Smith and Margaret Preston - and should rightly stand among them in the pantheon of Australian Art." ROBIN NORLING ASTO (Hons) ARCA (London) AWI