A Musical Celebration

January - February 2025. The Seamus Ennis Arts Centre, Naul, Co, Dublin

When I was asked by Colette Lawless if I would like to exhibit in The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre in Naul, my thoughts immediately turned to memories of Séamus Ennis, particularly the time he stayed with us in my parents’ house in Armagh back in the late 1960s. I was delighted to be asked to exhibit.
I have great memories of Séamus from the various times he came to play at my invitation at Armagh Pipers Club concerts and the memorable sessions we had at the famous O’Tooles Bar in Ballymacnab and at Hayden’s Bar at The Rock in County Tyrone, not far from Pomeroy.
What sticks in my mind was the drive to Hayden’s and Séamus’s response when I told him the bar was near Pomeroy. He immediately began singing from the back seat the great song ‘The Mountains of Pomeroy’. He seemed to have endless verses.
I remember too when Séamus, along with John Kelly, Jim Dowling and Paddy Ban O’Broin, stayed in the old Drumsill House Hotel, one of the mansions owned by the McGeough Bond family and built in the early 19th century. During that stay Séamus and the rest of the musicians asked to visit Eamhainn Mhacha (The Navan Fort) a couple of miles west of Armagh City. I remember John Kelly getting absorbed in the ambience of the place and talking about Cuchullainn and the Red Branch Knights.
My last memory of Séamus was when I attended his funeral October 1982 in Naul, not far from where he had been living in a mobile home which he had named Easter Snow. Every musician in the country was there and he had a wonderful send off.
John B Vallely
January 2025

Celebrating 65 Years Painting

An exhibition celebrating 65 years of the artist John B Vallely at the Sol Art Gallery, Dublin from Nov 2nd to 19th 2023.

"In the summer of 2023, after I had agreed to exhibit in the Sol Art Gallery, it suddenly struck me that this year marked 65 years since the first public showing of my work. That took place at the annual exhibition in Armagh Technical College in 1958, organised by Peter McGirr, the local art teacher. Shortly after that, in 1959, I secured admission to the Belfast College of Art, then located on the top floor of the Municipal College of Technology. In 1961 I moved on, to the Edinburgh College of Art. I have exhibited virtually every year since then, and in some years have had two or three exhibitions. This year is different in many ways, as the Sol exhibition consists of the first new work I’ve shown since 2021, when I had my 80th birthday retrospective in the Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre in Armagh."

John B. Vallely - Artist