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:

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.

A successful weekend

Dave's brushes. Photograph: Tobias Pearson 2014

Opening Dave's studio at the weekend turned out to be a big success. We finally seem to have struck the right balance between enabling access for people but also protecting the work. In 2012 fingering the work meant that there was some, fortunately a small amount, of damage done. This last weekend, with improved signage and at least one steward on each floor of the building, it worked well. Visitors were appreciative and clearly enjoyed the opportunity to spend time in the studio, looking at the work that was on display, watching the 'To Byzantium' film or Margaret Mytton's presentation of the 'Book of Revelation' series, or simply enjoying the atmosphere of the building packed with artwork. 

Thank you to Dave Smith, Ella Cole, Kay Kennedy and Tobias Pearson for stewarding over the two days and your support of Chris, Margaret and Bob from the Trust.

Rossendale Art Trail weekend

Image by Ruth Evans

This weekend we'll be opening up Dave's studio in Haslingden from 11am until 5pm on both days. It's part of the annual Rossendale Art Trail and Dave's studio will open alongside Globe Art, Valley Artists, Prospect Studios, Geoff Butterworth (Whitworth), The Whitaker, Jefferson Conway (also Haslingden) and, on Sunday only, the Boo.

The Dave Pearson Trust is to be found at 54 Manchester Road, Haslingden, BB4 5TE, and you can pick up a leaflet for the whole event at any of the studios - or at the Whitaker which also has a rather lovely cafe. 

An experiment

Today we tried an experiment, using the Dave Pearson Trust building to run a poetry workshop with girls from the local South Asian community. The Manchester-based poet Shamshad Khan, above, ran a two hour session upstairs in our Haslingden base, Dave's old studio. 

Shamshad was helped by Arezzun Nessa, and together they decorated the upstairs floor of the old studio to create a suitable environment for the girls. Of course Dave's paintings were everywhere around, and Shamshad said that the girls and the women who brought them along to the studio were inspired and delighted by the context. 

The Saturday workshops will now continue over the next few weeks. They are part of a project running throughout 2014 and 2015, organised by Horse + Bamboo, called Different Moons, which sets out to record and celebrate the South Asian heritage community in Haslingden and Rawtenstall. Dave, we're certain, would have very much approved. 

'To Byzantium' now available on Freeview

We've just heard from Derek Smith, the director who made the stunning and acclaimed film 'To Byzantium' about Dave Pearson. He tells us that the TV Community Channel has released its new schedules and that they are still programming 'To Byzantium'.

The Community Channel is now on Freeview 109 so it commands a much bigger audience than it did before. 

For more information on the schedule, go to:

http://www.communitychannel.org/schedule/20140923/

Enjoy!