Touchstones: Jake Harvey

Jake Harvey RSA, is widely known and admired for works such as the MacDairmid Memorial near Langholm, and his contribution to An Turas on Tiree, Western isles. He was born in Kelso in the Scottish Borders where he still lives and works. In his own words:

‘My creative stimulus comes from many sources but frequently evolves from drawing things seen and imagined, from lived encounters with the landscape and, in the reductive process of carving, from embracing the tangential ways of making that evolve. … sculptures carved in basalt, granite, marble and porphyry relates to a material and a way of working it. In a broader context it links to my aim to create simple sculptural forms; works of distilled essence that invite deliberation from the viewer; sculptures made by a process of paring down and refining in terms of both form and concept.’

This film illustrates Jake’s approaches to his work. It feature the landscape around Yetholm which he describes as having been the recurring fundamental influences on his work, a spell in India researching and sourcing stone, his working methods in his workshop/studio and the origins of his creative thinking which range from geology to poetry and from landscape to artistic theory. His forms are often in resistant material that he works with sensitivity to expose their colour, texture and formal properties. These simple abstract forms are carefully positioned in the landscape or have bases specially devised for them. Jake studied at Edinburgh College of Art between 1966 and 1972, and later became Head of the School of Sculpture there for eleven years and is now Emeritus Professor of Sculpture.

Friends of Edinburgh University Visual Arts is a charity registered in Scotland.

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or Margaret Stewart, FEUVA Trustee, [email protected]

Host or Publisher Friends of University of Edinburgh Visual Arts (FEUVA)