London-based graphic artist James Jarvis is perhaps best known for his vinyl figures, which helped kick off the ‘designer toy’ movement more than a decade ago. He has since set up Amos, a company he uses as a platform to promote his design and illustration work. We sat down with James to talk about his most recent comics work, De Profundis.
BERSERKER This is your first comic in a while; do you even consider it a comic? How has the book been received?
JAMES JARVIS It’s the first solo comic I’ve done since World of Pain. I did a small comic with Russell Waterman earlier this year, Caleb’s Adventures in Wonderlean, that was a continuation of our daily strip we did last year, The Wisdom of Caleb, but that was a very different kind of project, our attempt to do something more in the vein of the classic newspaper strip. De Profundis was very much a personal project, although the visual language I developed working on Caleb was influential.
I started De Profundis imagining it as a traditional pages-divided-into-boxes comic strip, but in getting down to actually drawing it I realised I wanted to maintain a process that felt as natural and instinctive as possible, and so I decide to work on an image-per-page format that felt closest to how I naturally extract images from my brain. I think by instinct I tend to think in single images. I’m not a comics natural.
In describing the book to others I settled on the graphic novel term, but talking about the finished thing with Dan Nadel I started to wonder if I shouldn’t just call it a picture book.
It’s interesting, I think the lack of subdivisions on the page makes people think on an initial flicking through that it isn’t a sequential narrative, which is a shame.
BERSERKER How was it working with the PictureBox guys?
JAMES JARVIS Working with Dan has been a pleasure. He got what I was trying to do straight away, and had been very supportive. As well as comics, he has a brilliant knowledge of illustration and graphic arts history. I know he was impressed I had been taught by George Hardie.
I met Dan when he invited me to take part in an illustration seminar he was organising at Parsons. At that time I was heavily involved in designing toys but Dan was aware of my primary interest in drawing. He invited me to contribute to Kramer’s Ergot, an invitation I was too lazy and stupid to take up, but I was flattered and was keen to find a way to work together. When the idea for De Profundis came up I immediately thought of PictureBox.
Currently I am pretty consumed by Yokoyama [who is also published by PictureBox]. I think it’s the most modern and progressive comics stuff my miles.
BERSERKER Why De Profundis? The book deals with the suffering of it’s central character and touches on theological issues, but is that it, or is there a hidden reference to Wilde or Lorca in there?
JAMES JARVIS To be honest I just wanted a bit of Latin because it sounds deep. It’s a Black Metal affectation, In Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo, In Aeternum In Triumpho Tenebrarumus.
BERSERKER To what extent could the book be described as autobiographical? Being an artist yourself, is this an extended essay about the suffering of the artist?
JAMES JARVIS I imagined a series of images and then a story without thinking about any particular personal perspective. When I talk about the book as a personal project I mean it simply as something conceived by myself without any intended navel-gazing connotations.
But seeing the whole thing finished it seemed fairly evident that a lot of the character’s concerns are shared by myself, including the clearing up of excreta.
BERSERKER Your use of colour is bold, with primary colours used almost aggressively as a counterbalance to open space on the page. You have previously mentioned De Stijl as an influence here. Talk us through your use of colour. Have you had a chance to check out Yuichi Yokoyama’s Color Engineering? It’s really incredible.
JAMES JARVIS Luckily I didn’t start reading Yokoyama until after I had finished the book, or I might have given up!
I wanted to use colour in a way that complemented the free line. The airbrushing was something I started using on the Caleb work. On previous comics, World of Pain and Vortigern’s Machine, I had gotten bogged down in a ridiculously tight and rigid way of drawing (something that I think emerged as a result of becoming so involved in 3D work). I really felt I needed to get away from that, and the drawing process I used has been incredibly liberating.
BERSERKER Large L and T shapes are used to populate the landscape the artist inhabits in De Profundis, again putting me in mind of De Stijl as well as other types of modern art. Were these movements influences on the book?
JAMES JARVIS I’ve always loved the way Mondrian combined the rigour of modernism with a feeling of joi de vivre. Sol Lewitt was also a big influence. I find myself drawn to artists who have developed very fully realised mechanisms for making work. As a teenage I was really into Constructivism.
BERSERKER You rarely use conventional guttering in the book, with whole pages forming panels but also individual images. How did you approach page layout?
JAMES JARVIS As I said earlier I think it just reflects the way I like to place imagery on a page in as unconscious and unmoderated a way as possible. I suppose I need to learn to see a page divided into boxes as one single image.
BERSERKER The book is silent with no speech balloons or sound effects. Do you prefer to convey your narrative using imagery alone?
JAMES JARVIS That partly came from World of Pain, which was also silent. Hopefully it makes the narrative more accessible.
I wouldn’t say I necessarily prefer that treatment but it narrows one’s focus a bit. I’m thinking of doing some kind of Socratic dialogue for my next project, so perhaps that’s a reaction.
BERSERKER What comics did you grow up reading? What comics influences can be found in your work?
JAMES JARVIS What I grew up on and what influenced De Profundis are probably quite separate.
In growing up I can plot an obvious path from Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke via 2000AD to RAW, so Hergé, Uderzo, Morris, Mike McMahon, Kevin O’Neill, Gary Panter, Mark Beyer.
In terms of current influence on my work I would say modernism an minimalism are pretty consistent fascinations.
For De Profundis I would describe the influences as Sol Lewitt meets Heironymous Bosch.
BERSERKER You are also known for your design work. How does your work in other creative fields inform your illustration and comics work? Do you even draw distinctions between the two?
JAMES JARVIS I go through periods where I have a strong desire to try and separate things out. I suppose because some disciplines seem purer than others; those that connect most directly with pure drawing.
I think there are threads that link all my work though, even the commercial stuff. I am lucky in that I am generally commissioned to make work that looks distinctively James Jarvis-like so people tend to accept the content that comes with that.
The main division is more in the style I make work in. Commissioners often shy away from the more hand-drawn stuff.
BERSERKER What tools did you use to create the book?
JAMES JARVIS The drawings were made with brush pen on paper and coloured in Photoshop. No pencilling, just straight drawing. Pencils are for pussies.
De Profundis is available now from PictureBox.
Tom & Simon
