Lorcan Vallely was born in Armagh in 1979 and completed his foundation course in art and design at the Belfast Art College in 2000 before studying Painting at Bath School of Art.
After successfully completing his BA at Bath he attended the Post Graduate Diploma Fine Art course at Chelsea College of Art, London in 2004.
Vallely then spent a year drawing and painting full time in Oxford as a member of the artist-run Magdalen Road Studios. In the past four years he has exhibited his work in London, Bath and Oxford, in Italy and throughout Ireland.
“For the past few of years I’ve mainly been working in charcoal on canvas but also utilize oil, acrylic and print, often combining these media. I really like the hands-on approach to the medium of charcoal, the ability to build up layers of tone with real depth and find that working like this on canvas, as opposed to paper, leaves much more scope for this approach; it’s a much more resilient surface. This also allows for the addition of a splash of colour that can combine with the tonal charcoal with very effective results.
I became fascinated with the themes of conflict and media representation of conflict during my time at art college and the year immediately after that, particularly those of the Middle East and Latin America - inspiring a large number of drawings and paintings. Time spent in Belfast in recent years has inspired me to look into our own traditions and conflicts for subject matter in my work; the world of Mickey Marley’s roundabout amidst the derelict streets of 1970s Belfast providing a particularly stimulating theme and going further back the Belfast Dockers Strike, taking place a century ago in the city are two examples. I hope, through my use of charcoal and paint, to be able to add life and texture to these people, times and landscapes.”