Regional landscape painter Valoy Eaton was born March 29, 1938, in Vernal, Utah. During the Depression, the family moved to Bingham for work in the Kennecott copper mine. When Valoy was five, the family returned to Vernal, where he first started experimenting with art.

During the next few years, Eaton continued to pursue his interest in art but without thinking of the pastime as a possible occupation. While wandering the fields around Vernal, spending time at his mother's home in La Point, and staying with his grandmother near the Uinta Mountains, Valoy grew to love the natural beauties of rural Utah.

In 1960, after graduation from Brigham Young University, where he studied art and played basketball on scholarship, Eaton mov...