Tony Jarvis (1946 -2024) was a talented painter and cabinet maker. He was born in South London and attended St Olave’s Grammar School for Boys. He had showed an aptitude for art from an early age so after leaving school had studied at Goldsmiths College, London, graduating in 1969 with a BA in Fine Art.
In addition to his talent for painting, Tony was also a skilled cabinet maker and woodworker and in 1972 was employed by the Tate Gallery in London as a Conservation Technician. Much of his work at the Gallery involved restoring and making bespoke frames for art works in the collection, including paintings by Turner and Constable.
Sayonara.
In 1980 he moved to Yorkshire, where he married Debbie, a general and mental health nurse whom he had met in London. They raised three children, and lived in Silsden. In Yorkshire, Tony was employed as a bespoke cabinet maker and furniture restorer, which included piano manufacture and restoration – and which included a badly damaged piano originally belonging to the Bronte family at Haworth Parsonage. In addition to his woodworking skills, he developed his own style of expressionist painting and became in 2008 a member of the Leeds Fine Artists.
Cloud.
His work in recent years was concerned predominantly with exploring colour on a fairly large scale. He said of his approach:
I recall one of my tutors, Albert Irvin, saying that he was searching for ‘a personal language’. I feel something similar, by looking for the unexpected, the surprise, result. Once I have started, the paint takes over and leads me in the right direction, and I work with it, and a painting that surprises me is one that is working well. If I start thinking, then ideas crowd out the creative process.’
Tony was also fascinated by Japanese culture and art. In earlier years he had become expert at Karate, which he also taught, and and in recent years had spent some time studying Japanese calligraphy with his tutor, Keiko Harada, in Leeds. Japanese symbols and images were a recurring feature of his latter day watercolour artworks, as shown here.
Stalemate
His work has been exhibited a wide range of venues in the north of England, including at the Leeds Art Gallery, the Bradford Open, Leeds Art Fair, the Keighley Arts Factory Millennium Show, North Light Gallery, Huddersfield, Gallery Oldham, and the Dean Clough Gallery, Halifax.
To see more of Tony Jarvis’s work, visit the Leeds Fine Artists website.
(Images shown here by courtesy of Will Jarvis.)
Meeting.