Dave Pearson (painter)

Inspired by the Yeats poem Sailing to Byzantium, throughout the 1990s Dave produced an enormous body of work and staged a series of ambitious one person shows in the north of England with paintings specially created to fit the dimensions of each space.

[2] As well as literary sources, other themes for his work have included Palmers Yard and the Jarrow March, war memorials, mediaeval bestiaries, ancient sites in Orkney and latterly his own illness and mortality.

[4] Adrian Henri, in Environments and Happenings noted his obsessional quality, and went on to describe Dave (in 1974) as "one of the most exciting new artists around".

As an artist he was unusually productive and passionate, and he encouraged and nurtured these qualities in his students throughout his long teaching career.

If Pearson was a great exemplar of what an artist is, he was also no respecter of budgets, bureaucracy or limitations of any kind and was renowned for his ability to use a whole year's worth of course materials in a week-long project.

The Trust has subsequently catalogued the enormous body of work, holding occasional exhibitions both at the restored studio and galleries, which has helped develop a wider interest in the artist.

As a result of this, and the involvement of the critic, writer and poet, Edward Lucie-Smith, there was a large exhibition of Pearson's work at the Bermondsey Project gallery in London, in April/May 2012.