Julian and Jackie have been busy at the studio; their work has made it much easier for me, and especially for Margaret, to select work and make decisions in preparation for the London show. 

Margaret has been given time from teaching at MMU to undertake this selection and curating as part of her academic research. As well as selecting work she is preparing photographs for the catalogue and collating the written pieces for the same. David Maclagan has already written a very interesting piece on Dave's 'unseen' drawings, and Edward Lucie-Smith is developing his initial article on the exhibition into a catalogue piece. Lucy-Anne Hunt was at the studio earlier in the week, holed up in the gloomy basement (a lightbulb had gone) searching through Dave's old books for evidence towards her piece on influences relating to the 'Byzantium' series. 

A visit to 54

As work winds down for the Christmas break, Margaret and I found time to meet up at the studio on 54 Manchester Road, and welcome two visitors, David Maclagan and Lynne Green, to show them around the studio and look at some of Dave's work. 

David I last met 30 years ago, but I've followed his writings in Raw Vision, as he is an artist, writer and lecturer who has a special interest in Outsider Art and art therapy. Lynne, it slowly dawned on me, is the writer of a book about the painter Wilhelmina Barns Graham, and I had a long discussion in the summer with an old friend, Jenny Wilson, who is a Trustee of the Barns Graham Trust, swapping notes on the issues faced by trustees of trusts that hold the legacy of a single artist. 

David is currently working on a book about 'automatic' drawing, as part of his work on imaginal psychology. Automatic drawing extends, I suppose, from doodling through to the use of the technique by certain of the Surrealists. He was interested in a number of pieces by Dave Pearson which appear to use a similar technique, and he left with half a dozen such drawings to consider for his book.