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Bryan Pearce
Painter & Printmaker

Bryan Pearce was born in St. Ives, Cornwall in 1929, a sufferer of the then unknown condition Phenylketonuria (PKU), which affects the normal development of the brain. Encouraged by his mother, who was herself a painter, and then by other St. Ives artists, he began drawing and painting in watercolours in 1953. From 1953 to 1957 he attended the St. Ives School of Painting under Leonard Fuller.

In 1957 Pearce began painting in oils and started to exhibit regularly with the Penwith Gallery. He became an Associate of the Penwith Society of Arts, and later a full member, having been sponsored by the sculptor Denis Mitchell. He is also a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists. It was at the instigation of Peter Lanyon that he had his first solo show at the Newlyn Gallery in 1959

Now one of the country’s foremost naïve painters, Pearce is well known for portraying the local St. Ives landscape and for his still-life compositions in oil, conte, pen and ink and pencil.

In the early 1970s Pearce began to make small etchings with assistance of fellow artists Breon O’Casey and Bryan Ingham, and later Roy Walker. Since 1976 a number of his oil paintings have been made into limited edition screen prints in order to bring his distinctive images to a wider public.

He has always worked slowly but consistently, producing perhaps twelve oil paintings a year. He has often been compared to Alfred Wallis, and the late Peter Lanyon said of him: “ Because his sources are not seen with a passive eye, but are truly happenings, his painting is original.”

Over the past 40 years Bryan Pearce has exhibited throughout the country, including the New Art Centre, Victor Waddington Gallery and Stoppenbach & Delestre in London; Beaux Arts in Bath and the Oxford Museum of Modern Art. In St.Ives he has shown at the Sail Loft Gallery, Wills Lane Gallery and The New Craftsman.

Public Collections include:

The Tate Gallery

The Arts Council

The Contemporary Arts Society

Kettle’s Yard Cambridge

More work available

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