Studio visits

It's now the second Tuesday spent, under my new regime, at Dave's studio in Haslingden. Ella has paid me a visit but she is otherwise taking the day out as an Easter holiday. Electricians have been in dealing with the connection which has, alarmingly, started bleeding a resin-like substance from the mains box. This has oozed all over the connection board. So, with the power off for best part of an hour, and the inevitable security alarm ringing unstoppably in response, it's been an eventful morning. 

We're going to experiment by offering Tuesday afternoons as a time when interested visitors can arrange for a visit and guided tour of the studio. So if anyone wishes to see Dave's work in its studio home, then please contact us via hb@compnet.co.uk and Ella or I will do our best to accommodate you. Ideally, we think, between midday and 4pm. 

Back to York

Yesterday I went across to York for a final look at the exhibition at the According to McGee gallery on Tower Street (opposite Cliffords Tower).  Today (Sunday) is the last day of the show. I also met up with Graham Breakwell, who helped me hang the exhibition, as he had come up from Shropshire with his wife Angie and their two children. 

It looked great; and I was very pleased to see that 10 pieces have been sold, including the smallish oil on canvas (above) 'The Orange Tree', that I've always rather liked, and was a late addition to the exhibition to fill in a gap when a couple of works were sold on the opening weekend and taken away by the buyer. 

Tomorrow then, it'll be off with the hired transit to collect the remaining paintings and bring them back home to the old studio. But today, if you're interested, there's one last opportunity to visit the exhibition, and perhaps buy yourself a fantastic painting.

A day in Dave's studio

Today is the first time I've been able to work properly alongside Ella at Dave's studio in Haslingden. This because I'm slightly reducing my days at Horse + Bamboo and allowing myself a day each week catching up on the enormous number of jobs that have built up in the studio over the past couple of years. Ella focuses very effectively on the cataloguing process but there's a heap of jobs that have been allowed to pile up - everything from deciding on whether certain sketches/scribbles should be catalogued to fixing the cistern!

This is also the last week of the Dave Pearson: Colourist exhibition at the According to McGee gallery in York. There have been a decent number of sales and excellent feedback from the show but on Monday next week I'll be collecting the unsold work and bringing it back to the studio.

Ella tells me that she is cataloguing number 5976 as I write; so very close to the six thousand mark. Yesterday she uncovered some beautiful gouaches and water colours (pic above), but she's now cataloging a large series of works about the Haslingden war memorial, in the park just across the road from here. These series - and Dave worked on scores of them, on diverse subjects - are usually variations on a theme, sometimes drawing and painting over a photocopied image. Because there are literally hundreds of these works, perhaps thousands, we're discussing placing them in groups by series in their own special boxes and giving each box a catalogue number, rather than cataloguing each individual sheet.