Bryan Pearce: The Artist and his Work

Naive painter Bryan Pearce was a much loved figure on the St Ives art scene. Although severely limited in his learning ability from childhood, when phenylketonuria was diagnosed, he was encouraged by his mother to begin painting in his twenties. He was celebrated for 50 years for his depictions of his home town, its streets, parish church and harbour in oil, conté, pen and ink, and pencil. The illustrations show the diverse range of his work, from the tentative watercolours of the early 1950s through the unique self-assured oil paintings to the extraordinarily sophisticated designs and dramatic colours of his later conté drawings.