Born in Greenville, Mississippi in 1945, Valerie Jaudon has been painting intricate, pattern-based works with a distinct use of color and light for more than four decades.

Her painting practice evokes motifs and the embellishments of folk art, decorative arts, and non-Western traditions of abstraction. The works often use symmetric compositions comprised of repetitive, patterned forms that span the entire surface of a work. More recently, Jaudon has explored how to compose her figures using single, continuous bands of paint. All of her works are part of an ongoing exploration of systems, and in using simple elements to create visually complex images. She is also known for painting with a highly limited palette of two or three colors at a time.

She studied at the Memphis Academy of Art, Memphis, in 1965, as well as at the University of the Americas in Mexico City (1966-67) and at St. Martins School of Art, London (1968-69). She has been the recipient of several grants, including a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, (1999), a Merit Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects, Alabama Chapter, (1994), and a Painting Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1992).

Jaudon has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. Her work has recently been featured at the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (Valerie Jaudon: Paintings and Drawings, 1980-1999), and at the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (Abstraction at Work: Drawings by Valerie Jaudon 1973-1999). She has completed various public art commission, such as Long Division, for the MTA Lexington Avenue Subway, 23rd Street, New York City (1988), Reunion, at the Police Plaza / Municipal Building, New York, NY (1989), and Free Style, at the Equitable Building, New York, (1989).

Jaudon is represented in numerous museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT, and the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA. She has been invited to numerous public panels, such at the DIA Center for the Arts, New York, and the The Art Institute of Chicago.