Bryan Pearce
Print Painting Book
Bryan Pearce was one of the country's foremost naive painters, and suffered from the rare condition Phenylketonuria, which affects the normal development of the brain. He is known for portraying the St Ives landscape and still-life compositions in oil, conte, pen and ink, and pencil, and is often compared to Alfred Wallis. He always worked slowly but consistently, producing perhaps twelve oil paintings a year.
Bryan Pearce was born in St Ives, Cornwall in 1929. 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 St Ives School of Painting under Leonard Fuller, and in 1957 he began painting in oils and started to exhibit regularly at the Penwith Gallery in St Ives. He became an Associate of the Penwith Society of Arts in Cornwall, and later a full member, having been sponsored by the sculptor Denis Mitchell. He was 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 Newlyn Gallery in 1959.
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 and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Bryan died in 2007, aged 77.
