Bryan Pearce, St Ives Harbour, c.1980

1980

Medium

Ink on paper

Dimensions

8 × 9 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-151033

St Ives Harbour presents Bryan Pearce’s most recognised subject matter, demonstrating the appreciation he had for the area throughout his whole life. Suffering from Phenylketonuria (a condition which causes learning difficulties) his mother encouraged Pearce to try his hand at art, and from 1953 he began to walk around the small coastal town to draw, moving to oils in 1957. Though Pearce never moved from the local area. He worked carefully and methodically, creating around just twelve paintings a year alongside drawings and etchings. Over the years Pearce has inadvertently documented and re-examined the familiar and evolving sights over the harbours and houses. Pearce’s artworks are associated with clean line and bright blocks of colour and the present work is wholly typical of his naïve style in pen and ink, capturing the harbour with playful character and pure simplicity of form. The sheet is double-sided and shows an equally archetypal lighthouse sketch on the reverse. While often likened to Alfred Wallis (who lived on the same street), Pearce did not take influence from wider artists; his works are simply imaginative and joyful representations of a place he held dear, and a way for the artist to visually communicate with others.