“Orval Hixon’s work, particularly the celebrity photographs of 1918 to 1930, reveal the fruits of this theatrical tradition in portraiture. He has shown me the glass negatives dating back to that time. They have been carefully worked over with the artist’s brush and etching tool and pencil. The plate for him was only so much raw material with which he could work. These plates, old and now fragile, are paintings in themselves, ghostly images in negative possessing the haunting quality of music half-remembered. They demonstrate the elusive union of the artist’s brush and the mechanical fidelity of the plate. All of which accounts for the unique mixture of dream and reality in Hixon’s best work….” (John Tibbetts -American Classic Screen Magazine – Vol Two No 4 -1978)