PERMANENT COLLECTION

DONALD HARVEY

NATIONALITY: British

DATES: 1930-2015

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Donald Harvey was born in 1930 in Walthamston, Middlesex, England. After studies at the West Sussex College of Art (1946-1950) and the Brighton College of Art (1950-1951), Harvey taught at an art college in Wales and travelled through Sicily and Spain. He immigrated to Canada in 1958. After settling in Regina, Saskatchewan, Harvey quickly became involved in the arts scene, serving as Executive Secretary of the Saskatchewan Arts Board from 1958-1961.

Harvey joined the Education Department of the University of Victoria’s precursor Victoria College in 1961 and, alongside colleague John Dobereiner, was one of the founding members of the Visual Arts Department in 1966. He was appointed as full professor in 1975, not only serving several terms as Chair, but also maintained a rigorous schedule of teaching and professional artistic practice throughout his 30-year career at the University of Victoria.

A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, his paintings, prints, and drawings received significant international recognition, and his work has been exhibited in the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal. Harvey’s work remains in Permanent Collections across the country.

“Don was at the forefront of abstract painting experimentation in the 1960s and ‘70s in Victoria,” notes Legacy Gallery director Mary Jo Hughes. “Coming out of the English modernist landscape tradition, Don moved into abstraction and developed his unique diamond-shaped canvas that rejected the horizontal landscape tradition while still very much being about the natural environment and its intersection with architecture. Younger artists such as Carl Beam, Rick Rivet and Eric Metcalfe proclaim he was a major influence on their careers.”

Visual Arts alumna and local artist Avis Rasmussen recalls being interviewed by Harvey prior to her acceptance into the department as a mature student in 1975. “He generously gave me the opportunity to develop as an artist—if I obtained a B+ in a summer course,” she says. “My life drawing skills thrived in his classes . . . I learned so much following him around . . . he was so articulate and his consummate artist and art history knowledge was invaluable.” She notes that Harvey even wrote her a letter of recommendation, which helped Rasmussen secure a three-week residency at the International Drawing, Painting and Sculpture School in Italy. “I was certainly privileged to be a UVic Visual Art student with such amazingly creative professors all professional artists working on their own art works.”

Harvey’s work took an environmental angle in the late 1980s, when he joined a host of artists who painted the Stein and Carmanah Valleys and donated the proceeds of their work to the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. Harvey also painted a large-scale mural The Carmanah Valley Experience—an installation of 31 abstract expressionist painted panels that are five feet high and up to six feet wide—which was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

WORKS BY ARTIST