Born in Sydney, Australia, Jane Valentine developed an obvious talent in her Art studies, graduating with a Diploma of Visual Arts at the Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE in 1988. She furthered her tertiary education in 1990 completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University. In her honors year she was awarded a scholarship to further her studies at the Studio Art Centre International in Florence Italy. 

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It was in Italy that she discovered the world of sculpture, in particular marble, and a where her passion for the medium and her long apprenticeship began. 

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At the completion to her degree she moved to the sculpting Village of Pietrasanta, a coastal Tuscan village situated at the base of the Carrara Mountains. A town internationally renowned for its marble studios, formerly used by artists including Michelangelo and Moore. 

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Jane lived and worked in Pietrasanta for the following seven years, and returns there at least once per year, as well as accessing studios in Egypt and China. She is one of only a handful of Australian artists working with marble. Her work is represented in several private, public and corperate collections. Both nationally and internationally. She has received several private and public commissions and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and Italy over the last 15 years, including the 1999 International sculpture symposium in Chang Chun, China, where her work is on permanent display at the International Sculpture Park. 

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'Unrequited' is the work of the appropriately named Sydney artist Jane Valentine, who created it last year in response to her own journey through loss and grief.

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"Our lives revolve around finding love and trying to keep it. I don't think there's a lot of homage to love that has left us," Valentine says before tomorrow night's official opening. "It's an incredibly important part of life. You can't escape it or control it ... I think it's very important to be able to discuss it and express it.".......

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About 160cm long and weighing about 90kg, Unrequited depicts a wing separated from an angel. Lying beside it is a quiver containing the fallen angel's arrow.

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Valentine says she will find it hard to part with a work carved from such a deeply personal place.

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But she says she's "exhausted" and "relieved" to come to the end of a journey she needed to go on and is pleased with the outcome.

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"I think I have achieved what I wanted to achieve, which is not always the case. It's something that I'm really proud of. It's a very dramatic piece, but it was a very dramatic situation."

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                                              Sally Bennett

                                              Herald Sun, 2016