About John Harvey

John Harvey is an historian of art and visual culture and art practitioner from the United Kingdom. His research field is the visual culture of religion. His art-historical studies engage with the imagery of popular piety in Protestant and sub-Christian traditions. His current projects include an investigation into apparitions and psychic imagery and sound, a study of visual transliterations of biblical texts, and audiovisuology.

Since 1999 he has made constructions, drawings, paintings, and prints that explore Judaic and Protestant attitudes to religious imagery. His works (predominantly abstract in style) result from an engagement with visual and textual sources, theological and cultural ideas, and systemic processes (examples can be seen in the Gallery). Recently, he explored sound-orientated responses to biblical texts and to the oral and aural culture of Protestantism.

He presents his research in the form of stand-alone projects and in the context of the Centre for Studies in the Visual Culture of Religion, through exhibitions, publications, and conference papers. Harvey is currently Professor of Art at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University, where he teaches Fine Art and Art History on the BA, MA, M.Phil., and Ph.D. programmes.

Harvey's work openly embraces a preoccupation with Christian doctrine and art, biblical studies, and Church history. He converted to Christianity in 1976, and has been committed to the theology of the Protestant Reformation. He was a member of the Baptist denomination until 2004, when he joined the Anglican Church.