The Jarrow March triptych now has a home

The 'Jarrow March' a triptych painted by Dave Pearson in 1986 has spent most of the last 20 years in storage. It has now found a home at the office of Horse + Bamboo Theatre company in Waterfoot, Rossendale, where it is on loan from the Dave Pearson Trust. The painting, considered to be one of Dave's most important large oil paintings, is 5.50 metres wide by 2.80 metres high. It will remain at the office for the foreseeable future but may well become a centre piece for a forthcoming exhibition at the Peoples' History Museum in Manchester.

Things are progressing with the move of work from Globe Arts studios this coming Friday to the See gallery and Dave Pearson's studio in Haslingden. Vans and skips have been organised; a team of helpers assembled; and Derek Smith is travelling up from London to record the move for the documentary he is making on Dave's life and work.

A date is agreed

The 8th October has been chosen as the day to move the work from Globe Artists Studios in Stacksteads; to move the work and tidy the space that had been Dave's studio when he worked at Globe. We've assembled a group of 6 or more helpers so feel confident that we'll manage the job comfortably within the day. Thank you to everybody involved.

Margaret has plans to record each piece of work as it leaves the studio - a production line photographic session. I'm particularly concerned with what happens at the other end, in Dave's old Haslingden studio. Room has to be made here to receive the incoming work and although the scale is nothing like the major move of work that we undertook in the Spring, there's still a significant amount of work to make space for. The unknown is how much, if any, can go directly to the See gallery in readiness for an exhibition at the end of October.  Note: I must ring Julian today and fix a date for this.

Another move

At last there's a plan to move Dave's things from Globe Arts Studio, where they've been since his death over 2 years ago. Dave was an important member of the studio group, although he was unable to visit or work there for the last few years of his life. Nevertheless there's a sizeable collection of his work there - especially from the Bestiary series, as well as a variety of work done for Globe exhibitions. 

Most notable of all are the huge string, nail, and wool pieces that Dave created as a response to his hospitalisation and early operations. These are raw, angry pieces that suggest wounds and cuts, and often integrate surgical material within the collages. We'll keep some of these but many - probably the vast majority - are beyond rescue and we'll probably have to destroy them. 

Once this has been done nearly all of Dave's work will be either at our studio collection in Haslingden, or in Chris Pearson's nearby house. Making room for it is another headache, but there's a plan to show highlights of the Globe work at the See gallery next month.

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.

Article in 'Lancashire Life'.

For anyone interested there's a new piece on Dave Pearson and the work of the Trust in the September edition of 'Lancashire Life'. It's also available online:

http://lancashire.greatbritishlife.co.uk/article/art-treasures-in-haslingden-house-23957/

The tax situation (in some detail).

Since the main reason to write this blog was in order to help anyone who finds themselves in the position that I was placed in, namely an Executor of the Estate of an artist, it's worth me writing at some length about the current situation with regard to Estate Duty. I went back to the early entries of the blog and realised that I never really discussed this in much detail. But now, 18 months on, HM Revenue and Customs are asking us for clarification it's worth saying something about the background and circumstances that has produced this situation. 

a) Dave Pearson asked me to be joint Executor to his will, with a particular role in looking after his artwork, and in that role I supported his son Christopher in negotiating the probate arrangements around the valuation of the artwork left by his father. In Dave's case this was difficult as he simply didn't sell much work during his lifetime, and had not sold anything for several years before his death. Probate, by the way, is a document that enables a person, usually an executor, to deal with someone's estate, between their death and the acceptance in law of the settlement.

I researched and explained the inheritance tax situation as I understood it to Chris, and I made a real effort to seek expert valuation of the artwork. You will appreciate that this was difficult as the artwork in the studio had not been touched for many years and the building itself was in a very poor state of repair, plus the artwork was distributed throughout the building in a chaotic way.

b) Dave's Estate included a studio, various 'chattels' (furniture and such like) and some money in the bank, as well as his artwork. The first things were relatively easy to value, and the total value of these came under the threshold for Dave's estate to need to pay Estate Duty. 

Chris and I  realised the importance of getting the work valued and spent several days on the internet and telephone trying to get expert opinion. Walton and Walton, auctioneers and valuers, of Burnley finally agreed to meet with me and asked me to bring a selection of Dave Pearson's artwork to their salesroom. Their website describes them as offering services for 'Professional Valuations for Probate'. I asked Chris Pearson to come along to this meeting and we had a consultation lasting about half an hour with their expert. He explained the difficulty of valuing the work; and given that there had been no history of sales of Dave Pearson's work for the past 5 years or more we were told that there was no basis to value the work beyond a nominal value. I asked for a written valuation but they declined to provide this, saying again that there was no basis or history on which to base a valuation and repeated their advice to put a nominal value on the artwork, which they felt was a true reflection of the value at the time of Dave Pearson's death.

To be certain about the issue I continued to research this, and spoke with several other valuers over the telephone. None would even meet with me, and the repeated message was that as there was no history of sales of the work for a period of many years, and that as Dave Pearson was not a 'well-known', or even a 'known' artist, any valuation could only be nominal.

c) I passed this information on to Chris Pearson and he met with his own solicitor, and at that point they made a valuation of the artwork portion of the estate in line with the advice that it only had a nominal value. This then became part of the valuation of the Estate.  

d) At that point we set up the Trust and, of course, this blog explains and explores how this was done. Then a few months ago the tabloid press got hold of a story that had started with a local news report - it was along the lines of the artwork being worth a lot of money ('millions' were quoted) and played heavily on the idea that Dave Pearson had been a reclusive eccentric; in other words a modern version of the 'miser's gold' story. Of course all this was very, very far from the truth, but then the press isn't very interested at getting at the truth, and clearly they felt it made a good story as it appeared in several national newspapers.

e) So the current situation with regard to HM Revenue is that they are seeking an explanation as to the gap between a probate valuation, given late in 2008, of Dave Pearson's artwork that is 'nominal' (i.e. probably between £3,000 and £5,000) and press reports in 2010 of the work being worth 'millions'. 

f) The key thing about probate valuation of an estate is that it's the value at the point of death. A subsequent change in value is irrelevant with regard to assessing probate. As anyone following this blog will know the whole point of setting up the Dave Pearson Trust and the work we've undertaken over the past 18 months has been to increase awareness of Dave's legacy and, as a natural development of this, his works have increased in value.  All sales of work since probate have been properly recorded, and in a period of 21 months the Trust has sold just under £50,000 worth of his work. We are completely transparent about this - in fact it's a direct by-product of our aims and objectives.  We met with our solicitor last month to discuss the tax implications of these sales, and that is currently in hand. 

g) Dave Pearson's case is probably unusual although I'm certain that it won't be unique. Clearly anyone undertaking this kind of work has to be very careful to avoid the charge that they had purposely under-valued the work of an artist in order to avoid death duties. In the case of an artist who sells their work on a regular basis this would be relatively easy to prove one way or another. For an artist who hardly sold their work at all it can easily lead to the situation we're currently having to deal with.

The taxman cometh

On return from holiday (hence the gap in these blog entries) I found a letter waiting for me from Woodcocks, our solicitor, and assumed it to be about the meeting we had last month to review the Trusts tax position. In fact events have overtaken us as Chris Pearson has been asked by HM Revenue and Customs to explain the gap between the nominal value inserted in the probate papers against the value reported in the media of Dave's estate. Go back a few months and we had frankly ridiculous and inflated reports in the press about the value of the work.

In the letter details were asked for about any meetings we had with probate valuers regards to valuation of the work that was left on Dave's death, and so on. This will mean going over things that happened two years ago; it's precisely the situation I wanted to avoid by talking with our solicitor last month.

Anyway, I'm certain that we have done all the right things, and correctly. One bonus is that we have this blog - documenting the process and the work we've put in to develop Dave's reputation! 

But anyway,  for now there's another weeks holiday to have and then buckle down to sorting this out and, hopefully, satisfying the tax authorities.