Image: James Vassallo moss tree 2

James Vassallo

Nearly four years ago I moved from Cardiff to the outskirts of Ebbw Vale in the Welsh Valleys. I still remember how impressed I was by the steepness of the hills here. Driving up with the car full of stuff I looked up through the windscreen at what I thought were stars only to realize those were street lights and houses. The skyline is often high above you and the steep hills are covered with the dense green of trees. A landscape with many signs of its prehistoric, industrial and postindustrial past. A landscape I find beautiful but also harsh and melancholic. My love for this landscape hasn’t diminished but it has gradually been informed by the history of mining and reclamation, through documentation and journalism of the time. But also through artworks, tales, film about and from The Valleys and stories by friends and acquaintances which though not necessarily factually correct underline the ties and impact it has/had on people. How green is my valley? A statement of wonder but also one that implies questions; the title of the group of works I’m currently working on. A statement made in all honesty when I moved here because of all the trees and Bracken undergrowth, but gradually, as stated above, my understanding of the landscape started changing. A landscape greatly changed by human agency bringing questions about how the valleys came to be so green? How green environmentally The Valleys were and are now?

Image: James Vassallo mama-bear

But also, do I have the right to say MY valley? I personally say yes because I use MY more in terms of endearment/ love for the place rather than ownership. This question is relevant as well because the valleys were a place of mass immigration because of the workforce needed for mining.

Image: James Vassallo moss tree 1

Moss tree 1 and 2 (115 x 150cm) were inspired by a tree I walk past virtually every day whilst walking the dog. Last autumn/winter I noticed how the tree, one of a row of similar trees, despite having no leaves was still green, the golden green of moss. It seemed like the trees had put on a velvety, intricate coat of moss for the winter. With the aim of capturing/representing this detail I couldn’t make a small drawing or try to draw the whole tree so I choose to focus on where the trunk splits into a goblet shape of branches. In the usual way I work I started making a detailed pencil drawing on a base of charcoal but after a few days of hard work I got frustrated and dissatisfied with what I achieved and started erasing leaving bits that I thought were relevant/interesting. This process of drawing, erasing and redrawing often brings up surprises, unintended marks that I work with.

Image: James Vassallo from a thousand and one lines

I often make work in groups, working around a title. I do this because I feel I can never say and address all I want around a topic in one ‘masterpiece’. It also allows me less pressure to produce ‘the piece’. The group of works A thousand and one lines is inspired by the forests found in The Valleys landscape and thoughts around the role trees played during the reclamation, when thousands of non indigenous trees were planted, and the role they play now, how successful or not the reclamation has been. This group, currently made up of 29 drawings, in contrast to the larger monochrome drawings are much smaller, around 10 x 7.5cm, and much more colourful.

Image: James Vassallo from “a thousand and one lines”

I’m trying to create something that feels precious like a jewel but also ironically make them feel less precious whilst making them and easier to use colour as sometimes I can be overwhelmed. In these works I’m trying to capture a feeling, a memory. I often take photos with my mobile on a walk or run only to find that they rarely capture what I thought I saw/ experience. I use these photos as a reference but the discrepancy between documentation and memory also informs the drawings.

Image: James Vassallo Joan – from in memory of

Sometimes, not often, I feel a photo captures something I don’t want to transfer into a drawing. Such photos are those in an ongoing collection of photos grouped under the title In memory of -photos of benches and other objects used to commemorate someone’s life and death. Each empty bench having a character of its own and seeming to suggest a person. I’m giving the images a person’s name, the same name from the plaque fixed on the bench.

Is being an artist for me like being on a continuous journey? Yes in the sense that like a journey one goes somewhere expecting and wanting to see and experience something, but like the best journeys end up finding the experience different to the one anticipated and seeing unplanned things that spark new interests. There’s no planned endpoint. For me its more about documenting the experience and through the process of making trying to understand a bit more.