Bruce Pearson VPSWLA

Statement

As a painter, printmaker and field naturalist Bruce Pearson has combined all three in a 40-year career as an artist fascinated by the rhythm and restlessness of the natural world pursuing ideas about wild landscapes and places where people and human activity interact with habitats to create interesting themes.

Methodology

The starting point has to be the field experience as pure observation is the raw material - perhaps a few small sketches, sometimes a larger more considered drawing, or when the moment is right attempting a more ambitious painting which one hopes distils something of the day’s experience. A work straight from the field can sometimes be framed and exhibited as it is; what’s left is taken back to the studio to be viewed in a new light and the snatched ideas worked through in different mediums - relief printing (lino and woodcuts), monotype and drypoint, screen printing, or oil painting. 

Over the past 40 years working as an artist Bruce has been fortunate in being able to travel widely in search of subjects from the Arctic and Antarctica, to Africa, much of Europe, and the Americas. However, a lot of his time these days is spent in a studio filled with drawings, paintings, notebooks, and sketches reflecting those travels.  Although there are still opportunities to see new species and experience different landscapes and also explore new ideas, searching through those accumulated volumes of creative debris for fresh starting points he is finding an increasingly exciting creative pursuit.

Bio

1969 - 1970 Art Foundation, Gt. Yarmouth College of Art and Design

1970 - 1973 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Leicester Polytechnic

1997 - 2004 Visiting Lecturer, Royal College Art, London

1994 - 2004  President, Society of Wildlife Artists, FBA London

2010 - onwards    Vice-president, Artists for Nature Foundation, Holland