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, 

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. 

Dates for York 2015

To confirm that we've now agreed dates with the 'According to McGee' Gallery in York for an exhibition of Dave's work. Opening will be on Saturday 21st March and the show will run until Sunday 12th April 2015. A total of three weeks, but covering four weekends and running during the Easter holidays.

We think this is going to be a great way to celebrate Spring. The show, we've agreed, will be called 'Transitions' and will explore some of the small-scale work that Dave created in-between the periods when he was concentrating on his major themes. 

An exhibition in York soon...

We're waiting for confirmation from Greg and Ails McGee who have the 'According to McGee' Gallery in York of a date for an early Spring exhibition of Dave's work.

The exhibition we held at the gallery last year was a big success, and Greg and Ails have asked the Trust to put together a second show for the space. The date they suggested was late February but we need a little longer to put something good together. I'm hoping for mid-March through Easter, but still are waiting for the gallery to confirm this. 

I'm thinking about what aspect of Dave's work to explore in the show. ATM is a small gallery and so lends itself to showing smaller pieces of work, such as work on paper. But there isn't much time to get much work framed, and so I'm considering looking at the output on canvas of a transitional period in Dave's output. One possibility is the period in the mid and late 1980's which spans the period after the Calendar Customs series and before the start of work on Sailing to Byzantium which, with Byzantium, occupied Dave for almost the whole of the next decade. 

The example above is a canvas about 1 metre square, and typical of this transitional period. It's also a time in which Dave painted the stunning 'Jarrow March' triptych that hangs in the Horse + Bamboo office, and you can see similarities in the composition and drawing.

Christmas

Christmas and New Year Greetings to all followers of the Artist's Estate blog or indeed anyone excited and interested by Dave Pearson's work. 

You may well have already received our Seasonal Newsletter featuring the painting above, which Ella uncovered recently when she opened up a folder of Dave's school and student works. If so, apologies for flagging up an exhibition we're all looking forward to - in 2105! A few of you noticed, or bothered to comment on, this typo which we promptly wrote off as being entirely deliberate. In fact it was, of course, meant to be 2015 and we are indeed expecting a second show in the first part of next year at the According to McGee Gallery, York. So, no need to wait those 90 years after all. 

Best wishes from Chris Pearson, Margaret Mytton, Bob Frith and Ella Cole.

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: