Victoria Star Varner's paintings, drawings and prints range from classically-inspired figural work to process-driven conceptual art, most recently addressing national identities and the significance of time and place. Her artworks have been in over one hundred exhibitions in the U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, England, Ireland, Bulgaria, Spain, and Canada, including recent exhibitions such as the Awagami International Mini Print Exhibition in Yoshinogawa City, Japan; 7th Internationale Exposition Bisannuelle Estampes Miniature, L’Ecole D’Art D’Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; The International Contemporary Miniprint of Kazanlak, Bulgaria; Miniprint International of Cadaques, Spain, and the 11th Biennial International Miniature Print Exhibition at the Center of Contemporary Printmaking juried by Freyda Spira, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Earlier venues include: the Flinders Museum of Art, Australia; the Ilam School of Art, New Zealand; Santa Reparata Print Gallery, Italy; The Library Project, Dublin, Ireland; Grunwald Gallery, Indiana University; the Nelson Gallery Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri; the Arlington Museum of Art, Texas; and many university galleries both domestic and international. She has been in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Camnitzer Studio in Valdottavo, Italy and has been awarded over thirty grants, a Mundy Fellowship, and the Jesse Purdy Research and Creative Works Award at Southwestern University.
Varner received an M.A. degree in painting from the University of Missouri, Columbia, an M.F.A. degree in printmaking from Indiana University, Bloomington, and received grants to attend the Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, and Crown Point Press, San Francisco. She is Professor of Art at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, where she is also Director of the Sarofim Fine Arts Gallery. As a gallerist, she has curated over forty exhibitions comprising artists of national and international scope. She has served two terms as Chair of the Sarofim School of Fine Arts and was appointed Chair of Studio Art in 2005, which has been consistently recognized in the Fiske Guide to Colleges among the top twenty-five small colleges and universities strong in art and design and was recently selected among the top ten art programs in the Southwest by Art & Object. Her interdisciplinary teaching has led her students toward successful careers as actively exhibiting artists, professors of art, art conservators (the Menil Collection, Harvard University’s Rare Book Collection), medical illustrators, graphic designers, landscape architects, gallerists, curators, and museum directors.