Researching Donald Evans

While Evans initially painted postage stamps as a child, he returned to making them in 1971, shortly after graduating from Cornell University and training as an architectural designer with Richard Meier and Associates in New York City. During a six-year period from 1971 to 1977, he painted faux stamps issued by forty-two countries he conjured in his imagination.

To make his art, Evans usually traced each stamp design in pencil, then completed it with a No. 2 Grumbacher paintbrush, watercolor, and pen and ink. To simulate stamp perforations, Evans pounded out a series of periods on an old typewriter.

Evans catalogued all of his creations in a book he called the Catalogue of the World, which resembled a stamp-collecting catalogue in layout and style.

Evans traveled widely during the six-year period in which he painted professionally, often renting small flats or staying with friends. Given the tiny scale of his art, he could pack an entire gallery exhibition under his arm. He enjoyed considerable success while he was alive, and had solo gallery shows in Amsterdam, London, New York City, Paris and Washington, D.C.

On April 29, 1977, Evans's Amsterdam apartment building caught fire. He did not escape. But after his death his reputation continued to grow, particularly after the publication of Willy Eisenhart’s The World of Donald Evans in 1980 (followed by a second edition in 1994). Several prominent critics and authors have admired Evans’s work, including Bruce Chatwin, Adam Gopnik and Nick Bantock.

Chatwin's admiration was effusive: "By common consent, the art of the drop-out generation is a mess -- and the art of Donald Evans is the antithesis of mess. Nor is it niggling. Nor is it precious. Yet I can't think of another artist who expressed more succinctly and beautifully the best aspirations of those years: the flight from war and the machine; the asceticism; the nomadic restlessness; the yearning for sensual cloud-cuckoo-lands; the retreat from public into private obsessions, from the big and noisy to the small and still."

Evans's stamps can be found in many museums and private collections.

Evans comes from Talgarreg in Ceredigion, and was born on a farm. After going to school at Aberaeron, he obtained his degree in Welsh from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Between 1966 and 1972 he produced the periodical Y Cardi. He won the "double" of crown and chair twice, once at the 1977 National Eisteddfod of Wales and again in 1980; he is one of only three poets to have achieved this "double double".

In 2006 Evans was awarded a PhD by the University of Wales, Lampeter, for his work on strict-metre Welsh poetry submitted to eisteddfodau in the years 1955 - 1999.

Evans attended Athens Drive High School, where he played tailback and linebacker. Evans also participated in other sports; basketball (power forward) and track (100m and 200m sprint).

Following his outstanding athletic high school career, Evans accepted a football scholarship to be a student-athlete at Winston-Salem State University where he played under coach Bill Hayes.

After playing several positions in college (halfback, tight end, & linebacker), Evans was moved to defensive end his senior year, and he had 10 sacks and 65 tackles.

Donald Evans is a member of the Winston Salem State University Hall of Fame and the CIAA Hall of Fame.

Evans was among the last round of player cuts six days prior to the start of a new season when he was waived by the Philadelphia Eagles on September 4, 1989. While with the New York Jets, he was called for two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and ejected after verbally abusing and making physical contact with referee Bernie Kukar at the end of a 28–25 loss to the Indianapolis Colts at the RCA Dome on October 30, 1994. He was assessed a $10,000 fine by the NFL four days later on November 3.