In the plan chests

Another visit to 54 today, and an opportunity to see what Ella has uncovered in her work cataloguing Dave's work. 

At the moment she is working her way through the plan chests on the top floor. There are six of these, and another three on the middle floor. Each has about 5 or 6 drawers (they vary a little), and at the moment she is going through a drawer that holds a lot of work from Dave's school and student years. So far there have been 200 drawings in this one drawer. Of course the quality varies massively, and some drawers have more work, most less - but all are particularly interesting to us as Margaret and I have never had the time to go through them systematically, so there are lots of discoveries to be made.

The drawing above of a farmyard is a very nice example, but not untypical, and probably done by Dave in the late 1950s. It's on ruled paper from a large notebook. 

Add up the numbers and it could be that the plan chests alone contain 5 (drawers) by 9 (plan chests) by 200 (drawings) = 9000 pieces just in these plan chest drawers. 

This coloured pencil drawing will be from his days at art school, and if it's not directly part of the work for the 'Astronauts' series it appears to relate to it - so probably done by Dave in about 1960.

Early work

I visited Dave's studio to day to catch up with Ella, who continues to patiently catalogue the work. We had expected to meet Greg McGee and Margaret Mytton to discuss plans for an exhibition at Greg's gallery in York. Unfortunately Greg has been taken sick overnight, so the planned meeting has been postponed. 

Instead Ella showed me some of Dave's school and early student work she is currently entering into the catalogue. Some of this early work is fascinating, such as this interior of his parent's home in London, where he would have been living at the time:

But inevitably, with someone like Dave who kept all of his output, not apparently censoring anything, there are many sketches, abandoned pieces and rejects. What to do with these? To put them all in the catalogue, or to start a censoring ourselves? Ella has chosen (with help from the Artlook software people) to create a fresh category within the programme - 'School and Student Work'.

This sketch of a baby is typical of the kind of work I'm referring to. Unfinished or not followed through pieces, probably of interest to anyone approaching Dave's work from a scholarly or research-based point of view, but unlikely to be saleable or of general interest. Putting these into their own section of the Catalogue seems to provide the answer. 

York

It's a hectic period for myself and Margaret Mytton, both with full-time jobs in the arts, and to some extent work on Dave Pearson Trust projects has slowed down as a result. Still, Ella is still managing to continue to catalogue his work, and she sends me interesting images from time to time. The last of these arrived yesterday - and is shown above.  

We're also meeting with Greg McGee with a view to finalising arrangements for a show later this year at his York gallery 'According to McGee'. More news on this as it emerges...

New website!

Finally I've found the time to rebuild the Dave Pearson website - it's at www.dspearson.org - and now it's up and running. 

It has a more extensive gallery than the old site, so dip in and have a look at the selection of paintings, drawings and prints from Dave's major periods. Plus there are a number of essays and writings about Dave. 

I still need to do a thorough check through it, as sometimes things go amiss in the process of uploading, so if anyone discovers any glitches please let me know. The only one I've found so far is that the Search Engine Optimisation programme has picked up a typo - and registers the site as Dave Person! Although I changed this as soon as I noticed it (when it showed up on  Facebook) it doesn't seem to register on search engines yet. My apologies!

Ella catalogues!

Just been to see Ella Cole at Dave's studio. Ella is now well into her stride, cataloguing Dave's output. We're now very, very close to reaching number 3000 in the catalogue - for many artists this would be a sizeable life's work. For Dave Pearson there's still plenty to go. Ella reckons it'll be at least 8 weeks before she'll finishes cataloguing all the pieces in the first room - then there's 5 more rooms plus scores of folders of work. But to be fair this first room does contain many of the smaller pieces - above is a self-portrait Ella discovered earlier this week. 

The exhibition of a selection of Dave's Bestiary paintings and a number of drawings at The Whitaker in Rawtenstall will be on until the middle of June. The Whitaker is the new name for Rossendale museum - if you want to find out more go to the equally new website - www.thewhitaker.org 

Rossendale Museum

Back from a short break that included a visit to the Reina Sofia Gallery in Madrid to see the collection including Picasso's 'Guernika' - so much better displayed than it was in the Prado - and also its wonderful collection of early and mid-twentieth century Spanish art, that I know Dave would have loved. 

During these last couple of weeks the Dave Pearson Trust has been honoured to be one of the partners in the group that are negotiating with Rossendale Borough Council to manage Rossendale Museum in Whitaker Park, Rawtenstall. This museum is at quite the other end of the scale from the Prado or the Reina Sofia but not without its charm.

Things have moved very quickly and there's still much to be negotiated, but we're currently working with the Friends of the Museum to keep it open. The closure is one of the victims of the cuts being forced on to local authorities, and this scenario is probably being repeated up and down the country. Rossendale Museum is a much-loved, but sadly not much visited, local museum containing a typical combination of stuffed animals, local history artefacts, worthy paintings of ancient local dignitaries and gloomy Victorian rooms. Amongst the collection are some real gems, and there is potential to turn it into an exhilarating and special place which, along with a coffee-shop and revitalised displays, could secure a great future for it. It is also situated in a lovely setting and we're very excited to be associated with this attempt to save, and re-galvanise, a part of Rossendale's heritage.

As part of this, Julian Williams and Jackie Taylor of the See Gallery (leading partners in the rescue bid) have put together - in record time - an exhibition of some of Dave's drawings and 'Bestiary' paintings in the upstairs galleries at the Museum. If you want to come along they will be on show, along with the rest of the Museum, over the next few weekends between 1.00 and 4.30pm 

A visit to the solicitor

Earlier this month the three Trustees went to see our solicitor. These visits are infrequent, and in between them we tend to forget the complex information (to us anyway) imparted on such things as our taxation status. So every so often we go back for a refresher visit. Fortunately Stephen Parr at Woodcocks is an excellent communicator, and we leave feeling - at least temporarily - wiser and more knowledgable. 

But now we're looking ahead to the situation in 2019, 10 years after the Trust was established, when there is a tax review of the estate. Even our solicitor acknowledges that the calculations involved in this are highly complex - and a simple top-of-the-head calculation is impossible to produce. This was our main field of inquiry on this visit, and we were promised an estimate of its impact once Woodcocks had run the necessary data through their software. 

Last weekend the results arrived. Given we've no idea of what the value of Dave's Estate will be in 2019 it was based on guesswork, but the results were scary - a possible tax burden of £75,000 or more. 

Best to be prepared of course, and this is all 6 years away, but the issue is clearly a serious one. We don't understand, if I'm totally honest, a lot of this. It appears that an estate is taxed on this basis every 10 years, so the same items get taxed over and over. Can this be right? It also means that if our work to enhance Dave Pearson's reputation is successful then we're also increasing the tax burden for ourselves - and remember that this is a tax on work unsold as well as work sold, so it isn't as if we've earned any income which can be set against the tax. 

Anyway, as you can imagine, these issues, and other related questions, are all very much on our minds. Over the next few months we'll be going through this territory in more detail. With the help of Stephen Parr and his colleagues. I'll keep you posted.