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Don Jarvis: Drawings for Dylan Thomas'
Don Jarvis came to prominence in the 1950's along with other Vancouver artists such as Jack Shadbolt and Gordon Smith. His lyrical form of abstraction was inspired by an expressive figurative tradition. The drawings for A Child's Christmas in Wales may seem superficially atypical of the artist's work unless one remembers his abiding interest in drawing and figurative work. Born in Vancouver in 1923, Don Jarvis studied at the Vancouver School of Art in 1948-49, and with Hans Hoffman in New York in 1948-49. From 1951 until his recent retirement, he was a painting instructor at the Emily Carr College of Art. He has had several exhibitions in British Columbia and across Canada. His work can be found in a number of public and private collections. The genesis of this marvellous series of drawings for the well-known Christmas story by Dylan Thomas goes back to 1957 when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation asked Don Jarvis to illustrate the story. What resulted was a fifteen minute film, making a very clever use of still subjects presented in forty-five drawings done in November and December of that year and first aired over the CBC on December 18, 1957, over the voice of Dylan Thomas himself. Although the black and white drawings are not, strictly speaking, sequential, they present a variety of aspects and details of the story through which cinematographic collage could produce a cohesive narrative. The drawings also provided a wealth of detail, and, true to the story, excellent characterization. What we see in these drawings, as in Thomas' vivid little story, is the spirit of our own past Christmases, stories that everyone has, universal stories. We thank the artist for sharing these drawings with us, and we thank Christmas for the memories. R.H.Boulet |
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