The fascinating world of Kevin Lavender: Cartoonist, Illustrator, Graphic Designer, Painter, and Children’s Author
Having attended Chesterfield College of Art on a 4-year graphic design course in the mid-to-late-60s, Kevin Lavender’s captivating life story has taken him along many interesting pathways.
In 1970, he attained Licentiate membership of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers (LSIAD). Ten years later, he gained full membership of the Chartered Society of Designers (MCSD) and about a decade further down the line, he became a member of their panel of assessors for new intake in the East Midlands.
Not shy at putting his drawings and paintings before the public eye, Kevin entered many a competition and attended a whole host of exhibitions.
In 1971, he entered a pen and wash painting of Chesterfield Town Centre in the Derbyshire Arts and Music Festival and was awarded the Representational Trophy. During the 70s, he held 3 one-man exhibitions of his work at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby Playhouse (now the Derby Theatre) and the Civic Theatre, Chesterfield.
In 1977, he was the successful winner of the first prize of £400 in a national design competition to create a playing card to commemorate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.
As far as full-time work was concerned, Kevin was employed as a graphic designer for a Courtaulds subsiduary firm in Langley Mill, before he was made redundant in 1995.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. And so, after redundancy, Kevin began cartoon drawing – doing illustrations for a national joke firm based in Bristol and creating illustrations for their mail order catalogues. Such were the calibre of these drawings, that they have now become collectors’ items!
Running parallel to this, and having completed a teaching course, he took art classes for Derbyshire County Council and Derbyshire City Council for 17 years – clocking up more than 2,000 classes until retirement in 2014. Sharing his knowledge and expertise with others provided him with the utmost satisfaction.
Kevin also began publishing a ‘mini’ magazine called ’The Villager’ for his local village and the surrounding area. This ran for 18 years until his retirement.
Around this time, he was watching the lunchtime programme Pebble Mill at One with Ken Dodd as the guest. Being a great fan of his since childhood, he decided to do a watercolour painting of him. By quirk of fate, Ken was appearing at the Derby Assembly Rooms on Boxing Day with a matinee and evening performance. Kevin did no more than take the painting on the unlikely chance of seeing him between shows. Ken really liked it and asked Kevin to sign it for him. He then asked if he did cartoon drawing as he was thinking about a new look for his Diddymen. Kevin told him that he did. He then said a rather strange, yet endearing, thing, “You and I were meant to meet”.
Following this chance meeting, Kevin worked on Ken’s projects until his passing in 2018, not only with the Diddymen, but also designing his ‘Another Audience With Ken Dodd’ DVD cover for Universal.
Having enjoyed working with Ken and his ‘Diddymen’, Kevin decided to create his own characters that he could become attached to. After much consideration, the idea came to mind: ‘What do children find amusing and parents find revolting?” Top of his list was their fascination for ‘bogees’. Kevin then wondered what it would be like if they had their own communities, how they are formed, how they go about their daily business, and what appropriate (nasal associated) names they could be called.
Over the past 3 or 4 years, Kevin has lived and breathed ‘Bogees’ (literally sometimes). They all have their own personalities – which he knows inside out! This fascination led naturally to the writing and illustrating of two books ‘Nozee Parkers’ and ‘Santa Bogee’, which are available from:
www.bannisterpublications.com or Amazon. Both books (‘the bogee bundle’) are available at the special price of £9.99