I had an interesting email last week from a Tony Lane, from Wales. Tony sent along photographs of two portraits he bought in a mixed exhibition in Liverpool. He remembers it as being in the late 80s or early 90s. He pointed out that he had no intention of selling them, but simply thought we would be interested.
They are lovely paintings - quite small, roughly 10" square. I mentioned that I thought they might be self-portraits, as they fit in with other pieces we have that include similar paintings that clearly are self-portraits. Tony instead thought they had similarities with the early (1960s) Van Gogh work. They clearly are rather later than that, and would probably have been painted shortly before the exhibition in which Tony bought them. I would say that they were self-portraits, but not in the sense that Dave would have sat in front of a mirror to paint them. From the mid 80s and onwards he began a series of paintings with autobiographical themes and I think these might well fit in with those works.
Thank you, Tony...and if anyone else has work by Dave Pearson please let the Trust know so we can add them to the catalogue.
Hi Bob, these were exhibited in Dave's exhibition at Senate House in Liverpool in the summer of 1989. They were part of a series started in 1983 that includes some gouaches and also large oils which were autobiographical in content, and many of which were about his parents at their home in Glyn Road in London. Dave's father Sam had died in 1978 and his mother Ann in 1983, and the series was largely based on his memories of them (as were some of the smaller oils in the Sailing to Byzantium series) as part of the grieving process. The faces in the doorways could quite possibly be self-portaits, or other members of the family, as many of the paintings were about communications and tensions, often in doorways or at meal times. Lovely paintings! I'm not surprised Tony doesn't want to part with them!
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