Bio

Born in Mill Valley, CA, Vasco Varriale’s upbringing was largely shaped by learning how to create with his hands, through a Waldorf education and a lifelong apprenticeship with his father, an Italian artisan who specialized in traditional architectural finishes. From childhood, Vasco worked alongside him learning the processes of fresco painting, concrete casting, bronze casting, scagliola, and marmorino. He earned a BBA from Santa Clara University and ran a small business repairing industrial electronics while developing his craftsmanship as an independent handyman and carpenter while continuing to explore photography, murals, writing, film, and installation. Vasco now pursues art full time in the San Francisco Bay Area, his practice centering on buon fresco painting and the strappo transfer process, with ambitions to present these historic techniques to the global art community in a radically new context.

Statement

Flakes of crumbled plaster and scattered pigments collect in the corners of my childhood memories. It was in my father’s shop, watching him form raw material into illusory facades, when I first realized that the visible reality of my world was too, a veneer, which rested on its own hidden processes and creators. I became fascinated with nature and mortality as I grappled with the opacity of powerful forces which I knew to exist but could not define, and there grew within me an insatiable curiosity to venture into the subjectivity of perception. The reason why I create is to express the isolation of self and connections to the world around me, with an elegance and simplicity that invites others into my personal vision of existence.