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. 

Full of activity - briefly

We battled up to Dave's old studio in Haslingden today for a get-together with various people, all excited by Dave's work. Ella and her husband Max delivered a desk for me to use (as Ella has, necessarily, taken over all the other work surfaces).  Julian and Jackie turned up with John, the framer, and his partner Sarah. John is the framer we tend to use, both because his work is truly excellent and because he also has a great eye for effectively solving some of the problems that turn up from time to time with Dave's work - such as how to deal with the cardboard reliefs made by Dave in the 1960s, and now looking rather vulnerable. 

Kay, my partner, also wanted to ask John about a frame for a large pencil drawing by Dave that she has recently bought, and finally Steve H, and his son Tom, arrived to collect a particularly special 'outrider' canvas associated with the 'Byzantium' series, that he has also purchased recently.  

So the studio was, briefly, full of activity despite the cold. It's incredibly well organised nowadays compared to how it was when we bought Dave's work back from storage after the building re-fit was complete. Let alone compared to how it was when Dave died. Ella's work will help this ordering of the work continue. In her first week of work she catalogued about 100 pieces of work - remarkable progress when she is only working three short days each week. 

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. 

The stag on the ceiling

It has been an eventful week; on Thursday I took two head teachers from local junior schools around Dave Pearson's studio. One of the heads had participated, at her previous school, in a scheme organised by the National Gallery called 'Take One Painting'. A painting from their collection was used as a source for exploration by the school-children. This could simply turn out to be a week of art lessons, or it could be a term of study researching something that developed out of looking at and studying the artwork in depth - perhaps a history project; research on costumes; or looking at customs from another time or from another culture. Anything that the children might wish to discover from the painting and follow in their own way, guided by the teachers.

This had been so successful a project that she wished to follow it with something similar in her new school - which happens to be in Haslingden. Dave Pearson's work had been mentioned, and so the visit was arranged in order to look at his work in the context of the studio, and discuss how we might choose a piece of his work and work together on such a project. The heads were very excited - it's early days yet, but I know this is the kind of thing that Dave would have loved and applauded. 

Then yesterday I met up with a collector I've got to know through his enthusiasm for Dave's work. Over the past couple of years he has bought a good number of pieces from the Trust - always well chosen and considered. Having visited his house I know that wall-space is now at a premium, so he had the idea of mounting a largish piece on the ceiling of his bedroom. Unconventional, and something I couldn't quite imagine - so I was presented with a pen-drive full of photographs of the piece in situ. He has even developed his own hanging system with specially designed slotted plates, and screw fittings with washer heads to hold the painting securely in place. Our collector friend is delighted at the result, and is now considering adapting another ceiling - and an even larger painting!

Finally, I also met with Julian and Jackie at the See Gallery to sort out the finances of the recent exhibition. Along with the proceeds from other recent sales, I'll now be able to pay another cheque into the Trust account. The Trust feel that we can use some of this income to help further the work in local schools. 

Quantity - and quality

This week I finished cataloguing all of the pieces that were in the December exhibition at the See Gallery, plus a handful more that have been sold recently. It takes the catalogue number to above 1000, although I think the numbering started at 100 or thereabouts (must check this). Still, it's a not inconsiderable achievement, although the thought lingers that it hardly seems to have made a dent on the truly vast amount of work that Dave left on his death and that still needs to be entered into the catalogue of his work. My guess is that there is at least 20 times the amount of work still to be catalogued - so a total of around 20,000 pieces. 

I also heard from a head-teacher I know that a Haslingden school, hence one local to Dave's studio, want to visit his studio to look at the work with a view to using a piece of his work as their choice for the National Gallery's 'Take One Picture' scheme in which primary schools through the UK are invited to 'respond creatively' to a painting. The guidelines I've found seem to suggest that this should be a painting from the National's own collection, but perhaps this is another, or an associated, scheme. Either way it's a wonderful idea and a tribute to the imagination of the school, St. James, that they have looked at the idea of choosing a painter who lived and worked in their own community. A tribute, too, to the power and ability of Dave Pearson's work to communicate itself to a wide audience. 

Visitors and interviewees

We've had a second week of Derek Smith visiting us (the first was in July). Derek is in the process of making a film about Dave Pearson and his work, and continued this week with filmed interviews of Dave's friends and colleagues plus some background filming of Rossendale and, in particular of Haslingden, Dave's adopted home. 

Among the interviewees were Melvyn Chantrey and John Hyatt (another resident of Haslingden); and there was a visit to the studio from David Maclagan, the artist, art therapist, author and lecturer. These meetings have all been facilitated by Margaret Mytton, my co-Trustee at the Dave Pearson Trust. 

Derek tells me that, since his summertime visit, he has also been able to interview Vince Rea, the founder of the Bede Gallery in Jarrow. Vince is now retired but had many memories of the time when Dave was a regular exhibitor at the Bede.

Invitations - and work-in-progress

The invitations for the opening, re-opening, of Dave's old studio in Haslingden arrived from the printers today and I've started sending them out. It's only going to be open for one Friday evening (December 11th, 6.30 - 9.00 pm) and the afternoons of the following weekend.

The opening will be, in the main, for old friends of Daves, colleagues and collectors - but also for anyone interested in finding out what the Trust have been doing. The studio building is, as I write, still covered in dust (I am too) and the builders won't be out until next week. But excellent progress has been made, and its exactly this work-in-progress that I hope we'll celebrate in a few weeks time.

Some of Dave's work will be moved back to the studio - in fact as much as I can handle as we want to be rid of the burden of paying the monthly rent on the storage (plus the rates, water rates, and utility bill). There's promise of help these next few weeks from friends, so I'm very hopeful that the building will look good and be back in the business of housing Dave's paintings by the time we re-open.

Work starts on restoring the old studio

On coming back from a fortnights holiday in Italy I tentatively opened up Dave's old studio in Haslingden to see if anything had happened during my absence. I never should have doubted the builders - the place has been stripped of all the rotten plasterwork and upstairs (see photographs) the room is now open to the roof-timbers. It suddenly looks like a quite manageable job. I'm suddenly very conscious of what a big house it is...

In the meantime Margaret has been busy and found 5 plan-chests (donated by Manchester Metropolitan University, where Dave had worked for many years) that will be a godsend when we start the process of returning the work back to the studio from its storage. Speaking of which, I was surprised to find that business rates (totaling nearly £1000) need to be paid for the storage unit. This is a bit of a blow as Trust funds are running low, although there does appear to be an appeals procedure and the possibility of offsetting this additional rates with a reduction from the rates already paid on the empty building. Meanwhile, it means - paperwork.

On Friday I've arranged to visit the builders again; pay a second installment of their fee, and discuss some ideas I've had about improving the storage capacity of the building as well as getting a clearer picture of what the costs will be now that the full extent of the dry rot has been uncovered.