Two showlets in the pipeline

The According to McGee gallery in York have asked us to show alongside Harry Malkin in an exhibition due to open on Saturday 6th April. We've chosen a selection of small canvases that Dave painted in the late 1990s and which demonstrate many of the traits of his Byzantium work (example above).

At the same time we're revamping the display at the studio 54 Manchester Road in Haslingden, to show a range of Dave's work that has been framed, and is ready for sale. We'll be choosing a day or two during the Easter period to open the building for anyone interested in dropping by. Details soon...

New exhibition at the Dave Pearson Studio

Running parallel with preparations for the large-scale show at the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh, which opens on Thursday 21st June, we're busy mounting a much smaller scale show at Dave Pearson's studio in Haslingden. The contrast between some his biggest and most ambitious works and the small and intimate self-portraits on show in Haslingden will demonstrate Dave's unusually wide range as an artist.

We're letting the dust settle on the Turnpike show then having a whole day opening at the studio on Sunday 1st July, from 11am until 7pm. So put the date in your diary and drop in at any time for a drink, nibbles, and a close look at over 40 self-portraits which have never before been shown outside of London. 

We've also been busy in other ways. In conjunction with Apna, who share the old studio with us, we've installed a new kitchen. Apna have also been awarded a small grant by Marks and Spencer to improve the back yard, and we hope that by the opening we'll have plants and possibly seating gracing the rear of 54 Manchester Road. 

Goodbye to the Trust; welcome the Studio!

The Dave Pearson Trust closed down at the end of last month, to be replaced by The Dave Pearson Studio. As a result Dave's work is now back in the hands of his son Chris. I'll continue to run things, and Ella will carry on archiving and helping support our work. 

So, it's a time of major change for us, and the office here in the studio is being set up to work more effectively for The DP Studio,as well as for Apna (who shares the premises) and for me as landlord (I'll be using it as a base too). We've already put in faster wifi and a more ethical power supply. Our email remains the same though, dptrust54@gmail.com. 

In the next few months we'll be hanging a new exhibition of a selection of Dave's self-portraits in our gallery on the top floor. We'll be sending out invites shortly for the opening. We're also getting our builders in to improve the kitchen area, (and sort out the leaking roof). Then we'll be moving some of the larger Byzantium pictures to the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh for a major exhibition opening on the 21st June. 

Discoveries...

Ella was away from the studio on a course for her 'other job' at the Whitaker Museum today, but she left me a text about news of some sales from the exhibition in York, and the discovery of some rather special oil studies.These are three of the 10 paintings, each about 60 x 50 cms in size:

In the workroom at Dave's studio there's a mezzanine area that we haven't looked at since moving back in after the building work. Ella has now completed cataloguing work on the top floor, but hasn't yet looked at this mezzanine. It contains a few dozen shaped canvases from the Byzantium series, and a some paper-mache works from the 60s. But there's also about 15 red plastic cases, and she has started to open them one by one - these pieces are from the second box.  

Tuesdays...

As I'm beginning to spend most Tuesday's at Dave's studio in Haslingden, I've found time to do some housework including rehanging in the very few areas of blank wall space that don't have paintings piled against them - such as the top floor corridor, above.

Ella, meanwhile continues the job of cataloguing the work - she's at number 7101 as I write! The present series is somewhere over 100 pastel drawings from the 'In the Seven Woods' series of the early 1980s. Another recent series, the pen and ink drawings Dave made to envisage how the huge 'Byzantium' series should be displayed, created a particular problem. The paintings are very large oil-painted panels, and Dave recreated these on varied sized sheets of paper:

The dilemma was whether to record each drawing as a single catalogue item - or as several individual sheets. In the page above it could be 8 individual sheets, for example. Or 6; or 4. Ella chose to record each as a single item - I think the way Dave intended.

Visitors

I had friends visiting today from Belgium, Caroline and Rob; they have in the past bought one or two pieces of work by Dave and were keen to revisit the studio in Haslingden. Seeing it through their eyes made me realise how well organised it has become over the past year...

Our friends brought along a couple of their own friends from Den Haag, and I spent a pleasant couple of hours telling them the story of Dave Pearson and, of course, looking at his work. By the end the Trust had sold another 5 pieces of work. We then drove down the road to the Whitaker to celebrate with coffee, soup and cake in the splendid new cafe area in the museum surrounded, appropriately, by some wonderful examples of Dave's work...  

...particularly admired by everyone was the large oil-painting 'The Boat' (above).

More visitors

The weekend involved yet more visitors to the studio in Haslingden. Five school colleagues, friends of the See Gallery's Jackie, spent Sunday afternoon viewing the work and enjoying the atmosphere of the place. I sometimes find myself taking it for granted, so it's always good to be jolted back to the realisation of how unique the place is - housing the majority of Dave Pearson's artwork, which is extraordinary both in terms of its quality and quantity.

These photographs show how different the studio is now from the place that I 'inherited' after Dave's death. Although it simply holds too much work to function effectively as a gallery, it at least offers a clean and fresh environment to store the work; and in some areas such as the upper corridor (top photograph) and the entrance room (immediately below) it provides something approaching a gallery display. 

More, it contains half a century of an artist's work, so it's unique as a place to explore his life and development as an artist. Most of the work remains unsorted, let alone catalogued, so a visit also retains the sense of being an exploration and an adventure as you pick your way through seven rooms full of paintings large and small, prints, drawings, notebooks - all the paraphernalia of an artists life. 

Opening Night

The studio on 54 Manchester Road finally opened last night!

At 6.20 pm we began to think that it might be the 6 of us - Kay, Sean, Margaret, Jackie, Julian and myself, oh and the drunk who lurched in off the street and eyed up our supply of hospitality wine, who spent yet another evening together. Nerves.

But no - by 7.30 there was a good crowd, and by 8 it was getting difficult to move around the house. I was busy most of the evening sorting out sales, which far exceeded my expectations. Everyone was totally enthused by the transformed building - what a good gallery it was; what an interesting and rather grand house! And Dave's work - the usual astonishment and the consistently high quality, the variety, and the sheer energy of it all.

Some of the rooms were hung as in a 'proper' art gallery, with numbered and priced pieces; other rooms were laid out informally - beginning to suggest their eventual function as store rooms once the rest of the work gets brought back out of storage. The photographs above show the entrance hall, and one of the 'casual' back rooms.

Thank you to everybody who made the effort to come last night - what a great and warm crowd, and particularly great to see Florence, Dave's daughter. Finally a big thank you to everyone who helped me and Kay get the building together. Certainly couldn't have done it without you!