Day 1: Don Harvey

Darryn settled on a serigraph (silkscreen print) by Don Harvey entitled Off Centre, 1966. The dimensions are 18" x 17".

Donald Harvey was born in Walthamstow, England in 1930. Harvey then taught in Wales, Sicily, and Spain before immigrating to Vancouver, Canada in 1958. He is now a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy and retired as a Professor of Fine Art at the University of Victoria, where he taught drawing, painting, and printmaking. He completed his National Diploma of Painting and Design at the West Sussex College of Art in 1950 and in 1951 he completed his Art Teacher's Diploma at the Brighton College of Art.

This print was purchased from The Print Gallery in Victoria which served as a vehicle for contemporary artists like Jack Shadbolt and Tony Onley who were also working in non- representational compositions. This is an interesting relationship for Gallery Lambton since we also have some work by Shadbolt in our collection. I also see a connection to artists like Guido Molinari who had a keen interest in the surface of a work of art. As the shapes overlap and intertwine with one another, a deep sense of surface is developed. This becomes filled with tension in certain areas of the print as the bottom layers optically fight their way back to the top.

In reference to English art critic Walter Pater, Harvey was quoted as saying that all the arts aspire to the condition of music. “Music comes to you, but you have to go to a painting. A painting requires imagination and involvement to make the body and intellect respond in a lively way.” [Vancouver Sun, April 11, 2010]. There seems to be a kinetic energy built into this print. The colours are very consistent in their value, so that when there is an edge between two colours, certain instability develops. Between this use of colour and the forms themselves, the image retains energy. In this way, we can think of the work of Wassily Kandinsky whose work tried to take us on a physical and mental trip.

As his later work attests to, Harvey gradually accepted a tendency toward landscape, and the role of nature in our lives. More accurately though, Harvey was interested in the effects of mans’ intrusion and intended control of that landscape, colliding the geometric with the organic.

Don Harvey is represented in many Canadian galleries including the National Gallery of Canada, Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, Seattle Art Museum, and the Canada Council Art Bank along with many private collections. He has been actively exhibiting since 1951.