Housekeeping...

It's now over 10 years since I started writing this blog. Initially the motivation was to give advice and support to others who might, like us, find themselves facing the daunting task of having to manage an artist's estate after their death.

Inevitably the first years' were an extremely steep learning curve - setting up a Trust; selling items of Dave's work to benefit his son Chris; cataloguing the huge amount of artwork; creating various websites; organising exhibitions; looking at the legal aspects of a complex inheritance...and so on, and on...and on.

I've documented much of this in this Artists Estate Blog and gradually, over the decade, our workload has settled down. At the same time, other changes have been made. The studio, which holds most of Dave's artwork, has given over space to local women from South Asian background - known as Apna, and their classes, workshops and various other activities have helped keep our building lively and exciting. 

But we continue to learn and develop. Over the past year or so we've wound down the Trust and from it created the Dave Pearson Studio; we've designed an on-line shop (www.dspearsonshop.co.uk) to sell original artwork by Dave Pearson, and we've curated a large-scale exhibition at The Turnpike in Leigh.

Most of the collection or work left behind by Dave Pearson has now been catalogued. But it's far from being done and dusted - just today, for instance, we've discovered a number of works on paper that somehow have been overlooked. 

The upper painting is ink on paper, and although I uncovered it a few years ago it somehow disappeared from sight and only reappeared today. The lower mixed media work, again on paper, is unusual for Dave Pearson, in its 'English romantic' colouring. I'm not at all sure of the dates of either - I think probably that they are from when Dave was in his mid-20s (early 1960s), but I'm not at all sure of this. As our archivist Ella Cole points out, the lower piece has some similarities with the Calendar Customs work of the later 1970s. 

We're on firmer ground with Dave's 'Van Gogh' period. This was from the late 1960s, and it was work he was doing when I first met him. Today we came across about 100 pieces of work from that time. They had already been catalogued, but before the present software was in place, so today we reorganised them to fit in to the new system. 

It's a period of Dave's work that we haven't done much with recently. But with the rediscovery of this tranche of drawings it could well be something we might build an exhibition around in the near future. The large-scale pieces he made at this time - the huge reconstruction of 'Van Gogh's Bedroom', or 'The Potato Eaters' have all been lost, but some of these beautiful graphic works survive and are well worth showing.

A glimpse at 1967

The photographer Paul Brown (http://www.paul-brown.com), who I knew during the 1960s, recently got in touch as he has been scanning in some old negatives, and came across a few from visiting Dave Pearson, probably in 1967. 

These were taken in Dave's house at 14 Burgess Street, Haslingden, now demolished and turned into the car park at the rear of the library. 

They take me back to a time when I was student of Dave's. Shortly after these were taken I moved to Haslingden myself. Dave generously put me up for a period of several months before I finally found myself a home of my own in Snig Hole, Helmshore. 

Dave is working on a larger-than-lifesize replica of Van Gogh's Bedroom, which I slept in some of the time. 

Van Gogh's 'Bedroom'

In the process of tidying up my office I just came across some old photos of Dave's. They were mostly from the late 1960s, about the time I first met him. It's when he was in the middle of a period of work which was totally dominated by Vincent Van Gogh. He worked in all mediums, but the biggest and most impressive pieces were large paper-mache reconstructions of some of Van Gogh's painting. Nearly all of Dave's work from this period has gone - either fallen apart or broken up to make space for later pieces. 

Van Gogh's 'Bedroom'. Dave built this slightly larger than life size. It was exhibited, I think at Liverpool's Bluecoat Gallery, along with other pieces from this period. Interestingly its mentioned (and illustrated) in Thames and Hudson's 'Environments and Happenings' by Adrian Henri, published in 1974. It says..."David Pearson. an obsessional artist from Lancashire, has emerged as one of the most exciting new artists in a series of recent shows. His work is almost entirely motivated by the life and work of Van Gogh...".

According to McGee

The next exhibition of Dave Pearson's work, which I've mentioned in several posts as happening in April is, in fact, due to open at 'According to McGee' on Saturday 15th March. 

I happened across this fact as I was searching my diary for something unrelated. In shock, I immediately rang Greg McGee and arranged to travel over to York and visit the gallery. This I duly did on Saturday, meeting Greg and his wife, Ails. 

The gallery is in a fine position facing Clifford's Tower, and is an intimate i.e. small, space; just two galleries but friendly and welcoming. The theme of the exhibition will be 'Dave Pearson, the Colourist', and I've spent the rest of the weekend considering how to do this in the two galleries available. 

One thing I feel sure about is to include a selection of pieces from the 1960s, when Dave was working, in his usual totally focused and all-consuming way, on work inspired by Vincent Van Gogh. I was very close to him at this time and I feel it was Vincent's example that drew him into a new relationship with colour. The early pieces, that Dave said were influenced by Pop Art, and often used colour in a schematic way, slowly gave way to a richer and more complex palette inspired by Van Gogh's own paintings from nature.

Found it!

Today I  tracked down the folder that contains most of the remaining small drawings and gouaches that Dave made in the mid- and late- 1960s inspired by his obsession with the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. I selected a few to photograph and send to a woman who had been a student of Dave's in 78/9 and only recently returned from working in the Middle East to find out about Dave's death. She asked to buy a piece in memory of Dave, who she remembered as being 'extremely kind to me...and extremely encouraging'. 

Searching for that folder reminded me just how few pieces remain from that relatively early period of Dave's work, and how the Trust needs to be careful and selective about those pieces that do remain, keeping examples aside for the Trust collection. This aspect of curating Dave's work is increasingly important as we get a clearer picture from the cataloguing and ordering process, (currently being done by Ella), telling us how many pieces there are from the various and different stages of Dave's output. 

By coincidence I was contacted via this blog by Katherine Tyrrell, an artist and writer who has set up an extremely valuable website Art after Death - Resources for Artists and Art Collectors which provides, in a systematic and comprehensively factual way, links and advice for anyone who finds themselves in the position that we did on Dave's death. It's also a very useful resource for living artists who wish to consider the future of their own work, and it is clearly aimed at both US and Uk based artists. Katherine also keeps an interesting blog - Making a Mark . 

Discovery of the week

The cataloguing of Dave Pearson's work has gathered momentum and we're approaching number 2000 in the Catalogue of Work, although before getting too excited I need to remember that the numbering system started at 110, but nevertheless that means almost 1900 pieces have been recorded, titled and categorised. 

It can be a fulfilling job, briefly having that close, if brief, acquaintance with each piece as it comes under scrutiny. Last week Ella came across an unnoticed folder of about 100 gouache sketches on paper from the Vincent Van Gogh period of the mid and late 1960s. She sent me a photograph of one - the discovery of the week!

More on the hat

The comment attached to my last posting, by Keith Fitton, prompted me to look back at the photo archive. In the period during which I first met Dave - 1966 onward - he was rapidly developing all sorts of inspiring work on the theme of Van Gogh. By 1968 Dave was working on a series of ambitious pieces based on some of Vincent's most iconic works. Today these would be called environmental or immersive pieces but, whatever you call them, they were papier-mâché and wood re-imaginings of, for example, Van Gogh's Bedroom, or the Road to Tarascon, which is the piece shown above. 

Dave's father was a tailor and he made the suit (and hat) - it's Dave himself wearing this in the photograph. There was a blue suit too, and a hat with candles, and there are few photographs in bad condition with me wearing the blue suit and hat (burning) alongside Dave in his yellow. 

The hat iconography grew out of this period - including that hat with candles - and Dave continued to use this distinctive feature of a yellow man (Vincent), and a blue man (perhaps from the friendship with Paul Gauguin) in series after series of paintings and prints. I think this identification was partly inspired by Sidney Nolan's 'Ned Kelly' series, where Kelly was always depicted wearing his odd letter-box iron mask. If my memory serves me well there was an exhibition of Nolan's work at, of all places, Accrington's Howarth Art Gallery, where we saw the Kelly series, and it was much discussed. 

Miniature Van Gogh

We recently had some visitors from Berlin; an old friend who asked if we could show his companion Dave's old studio in Haslingden. They stayed at the studio for a good few hours, and in the course of the visit we naturally looked not only at the piles of large canvases but also at various examples of Dave's work that are filed away in the many plan chests, and at the piles of small drawings, paintings and notebooks that have made their way up to the top floor. 

Among these are a small number of very tiny paintings on wood - done both in oil paint and gouache. These works are from the late 1960s and early 70s when Dave was obsessed by Van Gogh. The above example is one of the latter and measures only about 10 by 7 cms, and it's one of the many images that Dave painted with figures in rooms or in landscapes representing Vincent and others wearing distinctive large hats. In this one there's a hat on the table too; it has candles strapped to it, and Vincent describes using this method for being able to continue to paint after nightfall. When I shared a house, briefly, with Dave during this period we made a cake like this to honour Vincent's birthday.

The smallest example we found was an oil of Van Gogh's 'The Reapers' after Millet, that measured just 3.5 x 7 cms, and which my friend from Germany bought on the spot. 

British Painting 1974

At the weekend I came across a catalogue I noticed when we were moving Dave Pearson's books and papers in readiness for the refurbishment of his studio; then I lost track of it. 

It's a catalogue for an Arts Council exhibition, held at the Heywood Gallery in London - British Painting '74. Curated by the painter and critic Andrew Forge, it set out to be a 'cross-section through the anthill of painting in this country'. 24 painters admired by Forge had been asked to each nominate 10 painters they felt should be included in a survey. Somehow Dave Pearson was included, on whose recommendation I don't know. Although this may seem an odd way to select a major exhibition, it's telling that today I still recognise three-quarters of the names 37 years on. A good average, I would have thought. 

Dave (David in the catalogue) was represented by his two Asylum reliefs (Asylum 1 shown above; Asylum 2 below). These are both large and heavy pieces, and inspired by Van Gogh's stay in the asylum at Saint Remy. In Asylum 2 you can see the yellow and blue hats that Dave used over and over as a motif. I wonder if anyone remembers seeing these at the Heywood?

On the Road..

...to Tarascon. The above photograph (from 1967) shows Dave Pearson taking his version of the journey made by Vincent. This from a time when Dave's work was all about exploring his obsession with Van Gogh.  

Yesterday I had my first viewing of the draft assembly version of Derek Smith's film about Dave. It arrived by post the evening before, but I arrived home late and left viewing it until the morning. Even then it was touch and go and I had a train to catch - but I couldn't wait any longer and so stuck it in the Mac. 

There are still holes in it and the end is entirely unfinished. The inserted rostra shots of images are rough and often bleached out and, of course, there are no titles or proper soundtrack yet - either the music or a proper commentary. Despite this I was deeply moved by the film. Derek has found a way of telling the story of Dave's life that focuses on his painting and other artwork; that is informative and yet gives a real insight into a driven, contradictory, wildly talented individual. I'm absolutely confident that the finished film will do justice to its subject.

Our hope is that the film will be finished over the summer months and will be previewed and then released in September. Watch this space for further updates....