Vikki Day, Bio

Vikki Day’s love for fine art began at her grandmother’s side, watching fascinated as she created still life and Early-American-style primative oil paintings on her farm in Northern Illinois. A talented elementary and high-school art student (born in 1960), Vikki had enough passion, talent and accolades to be accepted to art school, but unfortunately not enough funding to attend. 

 

Instead, she used her skillful eyes and steady hands as a color matcher and furniture touch-up artist at her husband's piano restoration business in Chicago. At the same time she freelanced in decorative painting, gold-leafing, trompe l'oeil and faux finishes. 

 

At the age of 30, Vikki and her husband and daughter moved to Vermont and she turned her attention from “replication” to ‘innovation”. She began painting maple bowls with cold water process dyes and color pencils, creating whimsical artwork and achieving some fame as a Frog Hollow Artist at galleries in Middlebury and Burlington. She was also a featured artist at the Stratton Arts Festival in the early 1990s. 

 

As successful as that endeavor may have been, the realities of sending her daughter to music school required that she earn a regular paycheck. Over the next 8 years she worked as an office administrator for Vermont Public Radio and the University of Vermont Department of Music. Vikki found other ways to express her artistic talents through her desk duties. She soon built a secondary career in graphic design, using digital techniques to create hundreds of colorful posters and logos for the Burlington Arts scene, which she continued long after leaving her admin jobs. 

 

When the Pandemic caused the live concert scene to pause, Vikki’s graphic design business was also affected. She had long dreamed of creating oil paintings as her grandmother had taught her years before. Being largely self-taught, Vikki has explored many painting techniques and has recently taken up an interest in watercolors.

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Vikki is a member of the Essex Art League. Her paintings have been shown at the Emile Gruppe Gallery in Jericho, VT; The Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville, VT and at the Main Street Studio in Essex Junction, VT.

 

She resides in Williston with her husband Allan, and her Springer Spaniels Ella and Lizzie. She travels - less than she’d like -  to visit her daughter Emily, a professional musician in San Francisco.