Artist masters an unforgiving medium

by Keely Grasser

Sep 14, 2007

SUNDRIDGE – Valerie Junek once wanted to be an architect, but says that wasn’t an option generally open to females then.

Decades later, she’s using her precise artistic skills, keen eye and attention to detail that could have benefited her in an architectural career for another use.

She shows off dozens of meticulously detailed pencil and ink works she has stored at her Sundridge home. Junek, whose married name is Sedore (she continues to use her maiden name for art-related purposes), moved to Sundridge about a year ago.

Their home is adorned with her works. A pencil rendition of a man wrapped up in a scarf, with only his eyes showing. The sketch shows details of each stitch in the scarf’s knitwork. An ink piece: from far off a treeline, but a closer look shows thousands of tiny leaves, perfectly detailed.

Junek works with pencil, technical pens and brushes.

It’s an artform she picked up early on.

“In all my memory, I’ve always drawn,” she said. Junek has no formal training in this artform that may be the most unforgiving of all.

“You don’t make mistakes,” she said of using ink.

If a mistake is made, “you start over or get creative.”

But this is part of the allure of ink.

“It’s highly disciplined,” Junek said. “That’s why I like it.”

Included in Junek’s collection of work are “practice” pieces — ones that she used to perfect a technique before applying it.

Junek often works from photographs. To get perfect proportions, she will sometimes employ a grid system to duplicate photos in pencil or ink.

Junek shows more work: series of Victorian-style houses, a bird nestled in a seemingly endless tangle of branches, far-off sites copied from National Geographic photos.

She says she has no favourite subject matter.

“Just whatever tickles my fancy,” she explained.

Junek did have a favourite piece. She displayed her work at a gallery in Southern Ontario — she spent most of her life in Hamilton — and that favourite was bought by another artist.

She doesn’t know who bought it, but said that knowing it was another artist is the ultimate form of flattery.

But Junek, who uses her art only for personal enjoyment though she does do some commission work, does have a preferred media.

“I actually prefer the pencil because I like black and white. People have a tendency to look at the artwork if it’s black and white. If it’s colour, they look at the colour,” she said.

Perhaps, but looking at one of Junek’s work, it’s nearly impossible not to appreciate the beautiful detail present in every corner of each.