We now have a regular Monday morning meeting with Chris Pearson, in which together we look at the final details associated with transferring his father's estate from the Trust back to him.

Today we went along to Chris's house. It's just 100 metres down from the studio, which is where the vast majority of Dave's work is stored and where the Trust has its base.

Chris showed us 100 large canvases that are at the house (above); upstairs are perhaps a 1000 or more large works on paper, and some of these can be seen in the photograph below. Ella hopes to be able to record these too, and add them to the Catalogue. 

We took a couple boxes of mixed work back to the studio - pastels, gouaches, drypoints - and emptied them as soon as we got back. Already we're seeing some interesting new work, which has been unseen for many years.

The 2016 Art Trail weekend - Oct 1st/2nd

The Dave Pearson Trust is again taking part in the Rossendale Open Studios Art Trail on the weekend of the 1st and 2nd October. The studio at 54 Manchester Rd in Haslingden will be open from 11am until 5pm on both days. Admission is, of course, free. 

The weekend Open Studios will be bigger than ever, with 14 different studios  and workshops opening to the public, showing the work of a total of 33 artists. It's a great event and takes place throughout the Rossendale Valley - from Whitworth to Haslingden. This year there are 5 participating venues in the Haslingden/Helmshore area alone. 

Free, fully illustrated 12-page brochures are available from all participating venues and local libraries. 

At the Dave Pearson Studio you'll see the progress we've made in cataloguing the work, and Ella expects to have catalogued about 12,000 piece of work by the open weekend. There's a new sense of order as a result - plenty of work on the walls, but also boxes and boxes of artwork that are now labelled, photographed and fully listed in the archive. 

10,000

Ella has finally passed the 10,000th piece of work in the cataloguing of Dave's work. The works she chose for this august occasion were from a small selection of pastel drawings that she uncovered in one of the 20 or so plastic box folders that have recently been the focus of her cataloguing work. These contained a wide of range of Dave's work including a high proportion of early student drawings, but also a number of very special series from later in his career - including these pastels, three of which are shown above.

There remain two of these boxes still to be processed, and a mezzanine attic above the workshop space that contains a number of shaped canvases and a few early seminal paper-mache pieces from the 1960s. Once these have been done Ella will be able to move from the top floor of the studio to the two lower floors to continue her catalogue. 

Early fanciful drawings

Tuesday is the day I try and overlap with Ella at the studio in Haslingden. So today we met up and, among other things, discussed where she was in cataloguing the work left by Dave. 

Ella has reached number 9050 in the catalogue. She is currently investigating the contents of the dozen or so red plastic folders stored in the roof mezzanine space. These contain a wide range of work, mostly from Dave's early period. The batch she is in the process of cataloguing are gouache, pen and ink works on paper and I would guess from the early 1960s, when Dave was in his mid 20s and studying at college. 

They're an odd mixture; Ella felt that it looks like Dave is illustrating a story of some kind. There are lots of monsters, and hillsides with steps cut into them, so it's mainly rather fanciful subject matter, and I suppose these drawings look forward to the late Bestiary work. Altogether, they are a collection of very interesting early pieces.

A Hospital Series

Ella Cole is usually to be found, Mondays and Tuesdays, at Dave's old studio in Haslingden, where she is painstakingly putting together a catalogue of his work. On Tuesdays I try and spend a couple hours with her. Cataloguing the collection started in 2009, shortly after Dave's death, and I managed to catalogue about 1500 pieces over three or four years. In 2011 the Trust asked Ella to continue this work in a more methodical way. She started on the top floor, of three (plus a cellar), and has nearly completed cataloguing all the work on that floor - currently there are over 8,500 pieces in the catalogue. 

The four gouache and ink drawings above were discovered in an folder of work, and they appear to be studies for a commission Dave had, probably from Pete Senior of Hospital Arts. They're exceptionally beautiful and there were about 40 such paintings, each about 40cms x 30cms is size, 

8000, astronauts and the family dog

I called in at Dave's studio this afternoon just in time to see Ella Cole pass the 8000 mark in her catalogue of Dave's work.

Ella is currently working her way through a folder of some of Dave's early work - large watercolour and ink sheets, many of them associated with the Astronauts series that he started during the late 1950s, when he was 20, and culminated with a well-received show at the New Art Centre in 1962.

Among them are some drawings he must have made at home - including this lovely series of sketches of the family dog:

A tidying

On Wednesday last week we hosted a small group from Bacup & Rawtenstall Grammar School, who visited the studio, watched Derek Smith's film, and who were given a guided tour. This, along with the recent decision to open the studio for the Rossendale Art Trail Open Studio weekend in October, encouraged us to spruce up the rooms and fill some of the empty wall spaces.

The upper photo shows the room where pieces are photographed and catalogued and then shelved before being returned to their places. The two photos below that are of the room which is now fully catalogued. The bottom two photos are of rooms we probably won't reach for some time....

...probably worth adding, too, that we now have a Dave Pearson board on Pinterest; so if anybody want a quick peek at a range of Dave's work it's all there. Currently with over 70 pictures.

The Catalogue

I will have written about the cataloguing process way back; probably 2 or 3 years ago now. So it's probably worth posting a short reminder as to how it actually works.

Ella does a couple of days' work each week, mainly adding to the catalogue. She (as I write) is at catalogue number 6670. When Ella started I had reached around about the 1500 mark, which took me best part of 2 years - but in just under 18 months she has added over 5000 pieces of Dave's work.

What we call 'the Catalogue' is actually a piece of software called 'Artlook'. The company who make it are based in Milton Keynes and if and when something goes awry (which it does once or twice a year) they are available, on the end of the phone or email, for friendly support. It's a very reasonably priced package, and we would certainly recommend it. It's PC-based, which to me is a slight problem as otherwise I work on Macs, but other than that it does everything it claims - and then some.

Ella takes a photograph of each piece of work and enters it into the system. These photographs are fairly low-res and a simple guide to the piece rather than the definitive visual record. The title, media, size, value, date and so on also get entered and the software automatically generates a catalogue number. Ella backs the data up every week.

Artlook software offers all kinds of other cataloguing possibilities - accounting, comments on condition, even an on-line shop if you want one. The catalogue is also very valuable in recording the sales we make of work - including the names and addresses of buyers. In  this way it has helped us create a database of people who are interested in Dave's work. It also enables us to print out invoices, certifications of ownership, and other important paper-work. 

However, on the whole, we use only a small proportion of the resources that Artlook has on offer. Even so, we're continually using the catalogue search facilities, and the ability to print off the financial and sales records save a great deal of time and trouble. Finally, being able to view thumbnails of the work by category, and click on these for a bigger image if necessary, is also a highly valuable tool - probably the only way we get to overview Dave's work visually - or at least that part of it (a third?) which, so far, has found its way on to the catalogue.

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 

Wi-fi, and some support...

I spent the day at Dave's studio in Haslingden yesterday while BT engineers busied themselves climbing up poles, drilling holes in the thick stone walls, and making the place wi-fi friendly. In between time I heard them having conversations about surrealism and whether Dave had ever travelled to South America. Anyway, job done and we're now broadband abled.

This is partly in preparation for taking on someone to work on a more regular basis cataloguing and recording Dave's work. Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I continually go on about how slow the progress is doing this job. I've managed to catalogue less than 1500 pieces in three years, so at that rate it will take between 30 and 50 years to complete the job! But now we've taken on Ella Cole, who has cataloguing experience as well as a degree in Fine Art, to work on moving things forward. Ella will start work with us early in the New Year, once we've made the studio slightly more work-friendly (i.e warmer and cozier). 

Scratching the surface

Sorry, not many blog entries recently - but things continue to move forward, with Julian and Jackie dealing with plenty of sales and other inquiries about Dave's work. I've been finding it hard to keep up with providing them with the necessary certificates of provenance and invoices. 

Cataloguing the collection continues spasmodically too, and we've almost reached number 1500 in the Catalogue of Work. This is slightly misleading as numbering started, I believe, at number 110, and then there has been a few spoiled entries - still it means at least 1300 works must have been catalogued - for many artists a life-times work. In Dave's case however this has hardly scratched the surface and probably represents considerably less than 10% of the work that the Trust holds. 

I cycled up to the studio today to measure some of the pieces that I needed to catalogue  - including the three heads in the previous blog. At first I couldn't find the green portrait, when I did I found that it actually looks more like this:

So apologies for the washed out image in the earlier blog - a reminder of how photographs can be actively misleading if they aren't carefully colour-matched. Something Margaret spends a lot of her time  doing. 

Small developments

Untypically the three of us who make up the Trust met once again this week. This time to sort out a satisfactory arrangement with Julian Williams and Jackie Taylor (who together make up the See Gallery) with regard to the increasing amount of work they are doing for us - dealing with sales of work; framing and delivering paintings to buyers, and generally doing a lot of the house-keeping jobs that we don't have time for. Although Margaret and I both have busy full-time jobs, we're also closely involved with Trust business on a day-to-day basis but the simple fact is that the amount of work has increased recently. In part this is to do with interest generated by the film, but also the success of the Reveal Open Studio weekend, and our realisation that we now need to concern ourselves with protecting the most vulnerable work, build on the interest following the film, and continue to catalogue some of the key pieces of work. 

One of these key series is, naturally, the truly awesome Byzantium series of paintings. One of which, Bridge Street, is shown above. Made up of two panels - like most of Byzantium its a group of panels - it's nearly 2.5 metres high by over 2.75 metres width. Now, with Margaret Mytton having photographed the series, I've been able to bring these images together with the measurements and finally add them to the catalogue of work.  

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. 

2011

So after a break from working on Trust business over Christmas and New Year I'm back picking up the reins. One thing is to get the pieces that were on show at the See gallery (a selection of work from Dave's old studio at Globe Arts) into the DPT Catalogue. I had planned to do this months ago but a mix up with Margaret about photographing these works has slowed things down so I'm getting close to forgetting which pieces were in the show and having to rely on my notes. Not something I would advise; we realise we must systemise our photographic recording of exhibitions in the future. I also need to meet with Jackie and Julian of the gallery (I hope to do this later today) and sort out the sales and expenditure on the show. 

Slowly my mind turns back to the on-going issue of the Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and their query about the value of the work on Dave's death. This really has to be cleared up soon - it's a weight hanging over both the Trust and Chris Pearson. 

Addendum: By the evening I managed to track down and photograph all the paintings from the See exhibition. Julian and Jackie paid a visit too, bringing along two friends who explored the collection in a mood of awe and wonder and then finally bought 6 pieces of work. So it turned out to be 5 hours spent at the studio and, as ever, the revelation of new and unseen (to me) pieces of work; new delights...  

Making space for the big paintings

The photograph (above) is of one of the upstairs rooms in the refurbished studio. You can see where we've piled boxes and groups of the smaller paintings and other work; in the background are notebooks and very small works. With the exception of a handful or two of small paintings and a pile of perhaps 3 or 400 works on paper from the late hospital period, we now have all of Dave's small works back in his old studio (always excepting those that remain in the house, and those that are still at Globe Arts Studio in Stacksteads  - another 1000?). 

That leaves 200 large paintings to be brought over from the storage space at Albion Mill. This will happen next week, so we're now busy freeing up space in the lower floors of the studio to accommodate them. Tomorrow we'll free up two large rooms, one on each of the lower floors, and remove any work from the walls that will hinder carrying the large pieces into the building. Finally we'll protect, as best we can, the glass and paintwork. 

Once that's over there will be the slow patient work of organising all of the work; cataloguing it; and displaying it so visitors can see a small selection of work by Dave Pearson.