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Valon Roach, local artist, is one of the guest artists for December at the Flickinger Center. Roach was born 15 minutes after his identical twin, Vaughn, on Dec. 25, 1915 in a one room dugout near Hollister, Okla. where he lived with his parents, Roy and Dora Roach, and another brother, Vance, until 1922 when the family moved by train to Las Cruces where they rented a cotton farm. His father bought a farm for $2000 in the upper Rio Peñasco Canyon. The family moved there in 1924, and built onto the one room shack. His father put in twelve foot ceilings, saying that he was tired of bumping his head. Memories of dugouts do not easily die. The move from Las Cruces to Alamogordo was made in a covered wagon, which took three days. To keep the load light, he and his two brothers walked most ofthe way leading their milk cow. After arriving in Alamogordo, the family bought their first Model-T Ford truck. Even with such an "advancement" in travel, it took two more days to make the long "35 mile" journey to their farm. He said, "After a few more days of settling in, Dad and I walked back to Alamogordo to get our horse and farm-mule we had left behind. That trip took the better part of a day, and would have taken longer; but we got a ride into town just below High Rolls." The one farm eventually grew into 4 farms, plus a farm in Deming. In 1956, Mr. Roach and his brothers sold the mountain farms and put in a cotton farm west of Tularosa. He moved there with his wife, Lola and children Bobby, Elwin, Sandy, Belinda, and Tim. Roach and his brother, Vance, along with Bobby, farmed that land for 20 years. His retirement took him to his twin brother's farm in Deming until 3 years ago, when he returned to the Alamogordo area. Mr. Roach's first painting was when he was twenty-one years old (a mountain scene from his bedroom window on the upper Penasco.) This was while waiting for the long winter to pass. "I worked hard, and for many days, on that painting," Mr. Roach said. "Finally, the picture began to look like the mountain. That's the way all my paintings have been; namely, hard work, trial and error. If it don't look right, I keep painting until it takes shape, or until I give out - whichever comes first. To my regret, I've never seemed to find time to take any lessons." He said his second attempt at painting was another scenic view: "It took all most a year to finish, painting offend on as I had time. I believe it was my best work ever, and my friends and family have often said the same. However, the professionals didn't share the same opinion." He had entered the picture in the State Fair and was told by an art critic (one of judges) that his painting wasn't "modern" enough, and he also said that it looked too real, too much like a photograph, and too much like the pictures that had been painted 50 years ago. Mr. Roach decided to just quit and stick to farming, that which he knew how to do, as he reflected. It wasn't until 15 years later that he made the decision to pursue again his love of painting. Tularosa Basin's art critics must have viewed his work with more appreciation than the State Fair professionals; for in 1971 he was named the guest artist of the year in the 13th annual Tularosa Rose Festival. With a distant look of another time upon his furrowed face, as if briefly reviewing all his former days, and in his soft-spoken voice, he said, "I will be 87 years old Christmas Day. My eye is not as sharp as it once was, nor is my hand as steady; but I still paint, spending most of my time these days doing scenic pictures in my small studio -- which, for some reason, seems to generate more traffic than any other room of the house (it is the bathroom), and I am pretty sure it's not because of my art work. I don't mind the traffic though. I just keep on painting."
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