A new setting

Rawtenstall's Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery has reopened this weekend after a short closure during which they renovated the downstairs bar restaurant along with the corridors and stairwell. It now looks really stunning - and some well chosen Dave Pearson pieces , secondary panels from his 'Byzantium' series, really truly wonderful in this setting, offset by the new dark grey decor of the walls. 

Go along to the Whitaker for a great meal - and to see a group of Dave's larger pieces of work in a new setting.

Selecting work

Today was spent selecting paintings for the forthcoming 'Transitions' exhibition in York. It looks like being largely a fascinating mix of rarely-seen oil paintings from the period in the late 1980s when Dave was working towards the two epic 'Byzantium' series. 

Jackie Taylor and Julian Williams from the Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery also called by and selected a number of pieces from 'Byzantium' to include in the refurbished Whitaker, which re-opens this coming Saturday.

'Transitions' opens at the 'According to McGee' Gallery, 8 Tower St, York, North Yorkshire YO1 9SA on Saturday 21st March and closes Sunday 12th April 2015.

The newly refurbished Whitaker in Whitaker Park, Haslingden Road, Rawtenstall, Lancashire BB4 6RE reopens Saturday, 14th February 2015. 

A special showing..

Dave Pearson left his series of almost 300 illustrations of the Book of Revelation to his close friend Margaret Mytton. Margaret is one of the trustees of the Dave Pearson Trust, and she has carefully organised the series into a audio-visual presentation, as well as a website of its own, with detailed notes on each image. Link to the Book of Revelation website here.

Now Margaret has arranged for a special showing of this wonderfully inventive series of illustrations at the Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery in Rawtenstall. 

Book your seat at the Whitaker for this event, along with Halloween storytelling, with this extract from the Whitaker's website...

Dave Pearson -The Book of Revelation

All Hallows Eve World Premiere

Friday 31st October 2014

7.00 pm

Adults £5/Children £3 ( this is a combined ticket for this and the Halloween story telling event. )

Whitaker World Premiere!

Dave Pearson’s series of 284 illustrations of the Book of Revelation will be shown for the first time in its entirety in the deadpan but unearthly setting of the Drawing Room. This will be running as a special event alongside our Halloween story telling.

The Book of Revelation has long been associated with the three-day celebration of Allhallowtide: All Hallows’ Eve on 31st October, and especially Hallowmas or All Saints Day on 1st November and All Souls Day on 2nd November. The Book’s message is at once terrifying and consoling to the elect. On All Hallows’ Eve, Christians traditionally believed that the veil between the material world and the afterlife thinned, and imagery from the Book of Revelation was used in the 7th century prayer of the Office of the Dead, traditionally read on All Souls Day. 

In Mexico the 3 days of Allhallowtide is celebrated as the Day of the Dead during which it is believed that the deceased return to visit their loved ones. At midnight on November 2 In the town of Patzcuaro, people light candles and ride winged boats called mariposas (butterflies) to where their dead are buried at Janitzio, an island in the middle of the lake.

The Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico can be traced back 2,500–3,000 years to a festival in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar – about the beginning of August – in which rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors were celebrated for an entire month.

Things gear up..

Just as the autumn weather arrives and reminds us that we'll need to start hunkering down for the winter, the Dave Pearson Trust has suddenly sprung to life having had a relatively quiet summer.

After the visit to the studio last week by friends from Belgium, and wrapping up their purchases to protect them on the journey home, I've been sending images to Greg McGee from According to McGee in York as he has started promoting his 2014 programme of exhibitions, which includes 'Dave Pearson - Colourist'. Ironically the first images he asks for need to be in black and white, for an advertisement in the art magazine 'Jackdaw', which still prints only in black. 

Margaret Mytton and I (Trustees) have also arranged to meet Lucy Innes Williams and Leonora Gummer from the Bridgeman Art Library to look at possibilities of copyrighting some of Dave Pearson's paintings, and discuss the Artist's Resale Right. If we're lucky we may also tie this in with meeting our old friend Edward Lucie-Smith and Sergei Reviakin, who is looking at the possibility of showing Dave's work during Art 14, at Olympia.

Finally, to report that the new displays of Dave Pearson's work in the cafeteria room at Rawtenstall's the Whitaker museum and gallery, have proved very popular with visitors. Last night I met Jackie and Julian (whose See Gallery has now been superseded by their curating roles at the Whitaker) and they told me how positive the comments have been - both about the new cafeteria itself and Dave's work that enhances it. 

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).

Reveal Rossendale Valley Art Trail

Ella Cole continues to catalogue Daves work (the pieces shown here are from last week's 'discoveries'), and she is helping me organise the studio in Haslingden so it's ready for a guided tour this coming Sunday morning as part of Reveal Rossendale Valley Art Trail.

We've decided against opening Dave's Haslingden studio for the Art Trail. In previous years we've been overwhelmed by visitors and found it impossible to keep an eye on all the work. Plus with the steep stairs, small rooms, and increasingly overcrowded spaces and we've decided to just have one guided tour on the Sunday (which is already full). But to make up for this The Whitaker (Rossendale's Museum and Art Gallery in Rawtenstall) are using the walls of the new cafe space to mount an exhibition of Dave's work. 

So Saturday 28th (10 - 4) and Sunday 29th (11-4) the local artists studios and galleries will be open to the public - you can pick up a brochure at any of the studios or the Boo - and the Whitaker also has a group show, chosen by the curators, in their main gallery space. Should be a good weekend - not to be missed!

Life returns to 54

It's been a quiet summer for the Dave Pearson Trust. Holidays of course, but mainly other work being done by the trustees is to blame. But now we expect things will begin to pick up again.

We sold the lovely ink drawing 'Yellow Cat' (above) over the weekend, and will soon be making preparations for Dave's work to be shown at Olympia as a part of Art 14. In addition there's the Rossendale Valley wide 'Reveal Arts Trail and Open Studios' on the weekend of the 28th/29th September - and although we're not opening Dave's studio it will be possible to join an organised visit through The Whitaker (Rossendale's Museum and art Gallery). 

If anyone wishes to see Dave's studio over the Reveal weekend then please contact Jackie Taylor at jackie@thewhitaker.org and she will try and fit in a special visit. The reason we're not able to open the studio itself to the public is that every room is now functioning as storage space, so there simply isn't enough display space to show work in anything like reasonable conditions. Ella Cole, who works for the Trust in cataloguing Dave Pearson's output, is also in the process of arranging the top floor in an orderly way - with shelves and drawers of work all properly labelled and numbered in line with the catalogue of work (see photo below), rather like a library, and naturally we can't afford this work to be spoiled.

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