Artists
J B Vallely
J.B. Vallely, painter and musician, was born into a Co. Armagh family with strong cultural involvement in sport and language. Educated locally, he studied at Belfast College of Art and Edinburgh Art College and subsequently travelled in Spain, Morocco, France and Italy. In 1960 he attended the Rome Olympics with Belfast gym proprieter Buster McShane in support of the Irish weightlifting team and returned to Italy three years later with painter and jazz flugelhorn player Tony Valentine. He subsequently took up the uilleann pipes and studied the playing of Willie Clancy, Seamus Ennis and Leo Rowsome. In 1966 set up the Armagh Pipers’ Club.
A prolific artist, his work depicts musicians, dancers, sports and Celtic mythology. In 2000 Armagh District Council presented a forty- year retrospective with almost 200 of his works, displaying his progression from myth and spirituality to engagement with musical performance.His music themes chronicle the emergence of traditional Irish music from the shadows of the mid-twentieth century to the optimism of the revival later that century.
Most recently he further explored Gaelic culture and tradition in a pictorial dramatisation of the Flight of the Earls (1607). Turas na dTaoiseach- The Flight of the Earls- was exhibited at the Belfast Festival at Queens (2007)
His work appears in many publications, in particular A Work of Art (2000)
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