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 Victoria
Elbroch
Victoria Elbroch has lived a life rich and varied in culture, color, and style - it is certainly no wonder that she has been an artist from the very beginning. Born in Cheshire, England, Victoria grew up in India and Pakistan, while receiving her education at schools in the United Kingdom. The picturesque villages of East Anglia (on the east coast of Britain) drew her artist's heart and eye and continue to do so to this day. It was there, in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, that she and I met and married. In 1972, she gave birth to our son, Mark, and still had enough creative energy left over to hold her first - and remarkably successful - one-woman show. She sold all but two of her original pen and ink drawings of the region!
My career in the US military took the family back to the United States - first to Alabama, then to Central Florida where our daughter, Anna, was born in 1975. Victoria studied at the Lock Haven Art Center in Orlando; when the family relocated to Oklahoma, she continued her training at the University of Oklahoma. "There's an excitement about art in the Midwest," says Victoria. "Perhaps because the Plains states are so stark, so the people there want to make their homes more beautiful." Whatever the reason, Victoria's art blossomed in Oklahoma and Oklahoma soon blossomed with Victoria's art.
It was in Oklahoma, while standing in line at a framing shop, that Victoria first met the late master printmaker, Loraine Moore. Victoria's professional relationship with Ms. Moore was, in Victoria's own words, "life changing." Studying and working with Ms. Moore influenced and transformed both Victoria's knowledge and understanding of the art of printmaking as well as the works she produced. These two extraordinarily talented women worked together for many years and held a two-artist exhibition at the Oklahoma Arts Center in 1982.
In 1982, our family relocated to New England, where Victoria and I have resided ever since - in southern New Hampshire for many years and then, as of early 2005, in Kittery, on the coast of Maine. Victoria continues to draw inspiration from the villages of Britain's east coast, but her years in and around New England have provided a new wellspring of inspiration and material. She has won numerous awards both in the Midwest and throughout New England. Victoria attained Copley artist status in the 1980s, and she has been a juried member of the New Hampshire Art Association and the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen since 1982.
- Lawrence Elbroch
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