MATT JARVIS
Transforming everyday moments into bold visual narratives, his work captures raw emotion in color.
Description of Art
Painting, Photography, Graphic Design, Graphic Novels, Commercial, Portraiture, Journalism / Documentary, Fine Art, Media Art
Artist Biography
I started out drawing when my parents gave me a Star Wars "design" book for Christmas back in 1977. My grandparents gave me a pastel chalk set for my birthday in 1979 and this introduced color into my artistic toolbox. In high school I was introduced to acrylic and oil paints plus pen and ink drawings (had a pen and ink drawing in an Oregon State University Land Grant University calendar and had my paintings exhibited for the first time). When I went off to college my parents told me not to take any art courses but to study something that would become a career. I took one water color painting course and kept painting on the side but my studies were something else completely. I ended up dropping out of college one quarter away from my bachelor's degree because when traveling I took some photographs I thought I would use to paint from but they ended up getting sold to a magazine in late 1990. Thus began my career as a commercial / editorial photographer. At one point I went back to school and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from the University of Washington (1996). Later, I would earn my Master of Fine Arts in Media Arts from the University of Oklahoma (2003). Like I said, I went into commercial / editorial photography (learning photography as I had assignments, real on the job training using what I was reading in library books to do professional assignments). I would later get a Fine Arts education and also work as professional photojournalist (images were work-for-hire) and commercial graphic designer. I produced one graphic novel in 2012 that sold about half of the copies printed, but have been inspired this last semester (Spring 2021) to create the sequel. Yes, I teach art at Bacone College half-time.
