Our Most South-Westerly Tip of England Correspondent finds a wholly different and original perspective on the world outside his front door (Different Ways of Seeing is on at Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance until 12 November).
I recently visited a gallery (www.penleehouse.org.uk) around the corner from my home which was showing works by three of the leading Cornish artists of the twentieth century – Fred Yates, Joan Gilchrist and Bryan Pearce. All three artists lived well into old age and died within eighteen months of each other between January 2007 and July 2008.
The trio were members of the St Ives school of painters that flourished in West Cornwall in the post-war years. Today their paintings are exhibited nationally and can fetch tens of thousand of pounds at auction.
For me, the stand out artist was Bryan Pearce. His paintings capture places I know and love with a beautiful simplicity. The thick, heavy outlines in them have often led to comparisons with stained glass.
A wonderful optimism flows through his work; the sea is always calm, the sky is a cloudless blue. There are never any storm clouds. I am particularly fond of his paintings of St. Ives harbour. He would call them his ‘St. Ives harbour all-around paintings’ because the way he painted them was as if you were walking around it. This style was very much his own.
Bryan Pearce suffered from the congenital disease phenylketonuria, which affects the normal development of the brain. Conversation with him was limited and he relied on the help of others to live. He spent much of his life being looked after by his mother who not only ensured he had all the paraphernalia he needed to work, but also organised the exhibitions that provided him with an income and were to give him national recognition.
Fellow artist Peter Lanyon said that his disability gave his work “an awareness more direct than observation” and “it is necessary to accept these works as the labour of a man who has to communicate this way because there is no other.”
Pearce would say little about his work. When asked why he painted something the way he did he would always reply ‘because I wanted to’. He did enrol at art school in St Ives, but the teacher thought it best to just let him get on with his work. He simply wasn’t interested in being taught or looking at the work of others. His work was absolutely his own. I wonder how many artists can honestly claim that.
Critics sometimes describe his art as child-like, a term I find slightly patronising. He wasn’t a child, he was a grown up. He just saw things differently. And I, like his many fans, am very thankful that he did.
My own personal view of Pearce is that his art in itself is not ‘childlike’, but that it seems on first impression to be the sort of art that you can imagine a child liking, if that makes sense. It is certainly wonderfully cheering
I hadn’t come across Bryan Penlee and I enjoy Alfred Wallis’s paintings so thanks for the introduction. Strange that Cornwall should have two outstanding naive artists both painting harbours…
Yes, and one harbour in particular – St. Ives. I agree, Alfred Wallis is outstanding. A fisherman who only took up painting “for company” after his wife died. Lived in poverty and died in a workhouse. Yet today his matchboxes with a couple of squiggles on them go for thousands at auction. I also like the work of Christopher Wood who also painted the harbour at St Ives http://bit.ly/qdenia. He was one of the subjects of Sebastian Faulk’s book ‘The Fatal Englishman’. Aged just 29, he threw himself in front of a train after having lunch with his mother.
‘Wonderfully cheering’ – well put worm. Especially so this morning. It’s very grey and pouring with rain. The Met Office have just raised their weather warning for West Cornwall from ‘being aware’ to ‘be prepared’. Not really sure what I should be preparing for or how I should prepare for it but have my wet suit close by just in case…
yes, we drove out of Cornwall last night with the darkening clouds nipping at our heels! Batten down the hatches!
I wonder if ‘childlike’ art is easier to copy? A 40 year old former art teacher, Rizvan Rahman, has just received a jail sentence for selling more than 30 forgeries of oil paintings, including a pair of paintings by the late Mousehole artist, Jack Pender. It took a Cornish auctioneer to uncover the fraud. I’m surprised no one immediately saw through Rahman’s fake art dealing name – Haslam and Purdy…