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Nick Pearson

@nickpearson60

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Artist and educator
• Lecturer in fine art and art & design history
• Director and Lecturer at OPEN Ealing, London

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‘Reciprocal Equivalents’ 2026
*thanks, Pat @patricks.ford – that title will do fine for now (thanks too for the vote, Viv @pedleyvivian)

More photos of a drawing, based on a wall-piece, constructed by following ideas in the drawing (and vice versa) – in progress. Neither one came first. Each was based on the other, in a mutually interdependent, ongoing, reciprocal relationship – made in tandem (see earlier posts).

I extended it horizontally to take in a wider view, filling the viewer's field of vision. Looking at the 3D parts of the object, when standing in front of it, we see them in real space from the sides. These are described face-on in the drawing, flattened. Maybe this has something obliquely to do with Cubism?

Whether it does or not, this drawing is getting damn big (7-feet across now!).

1. studio shot (a tidier space, while I'm advertising for a studio share!)
2. development of the wall-piece
3. development of the drawing
4–7. details
8. wall-piece and drawing together from left
9. wall-piece and drawing two together from right

#contemporaryart #drawing #wallbasedsculpture #inthestudio #largedrawings #assemblage #collage #expandedpainting #inthestudio #drawing #contemporarydrawings #experimentaldrawing taken in London, United Kingdom by @nickpearson60

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8 days ago

Holiday notebook –

From Leeds in West Yorkshire to Collioure in Catalonian Southern France, where Matisse and Derain famously invented Fauvism in 1905 and where, without looking for the picturesque, it kicks you up the arse in any case – and you can’t really escape it. Then Montpellier and the famous Musée Fabre (Leeds is famous for other things!):

1.Lightning tree, Roundhay Park, Leeds. 2. Eglise de N.D. des Anges and Baie de Collioure from Plage Boromar. 3. Chateau Royal from Plage St Vincent. 4. Napkin Monkey from collaged ice cream tissues. 5. The port, fort and chateau from Bar l’Ambiance. 6. Barques Catalan. 7. Filling time on a very delayed Easyjet flight home (with in-flight mag & smuggled-in scalpel blade). 8. The port (from a photo taken from Bar l’Ambiance). 9. On to Montpellier’s @musee_fabre and a reprise of me saying ‘Good Morning, Mr Courbet’ (the photographer insisted on the same hideous holiday shirt as before - see post: 29 July 2022). 10. An interestingly edgy Degas from c.1872. 11. Flower painting by Manet towards the end of his life when sometimes he was only well enough to paint the flowers friends brought him (he did manage ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’ that year in 1882 though too!). 12. I’d never come across this Charles Charles Camoin ‘Portrait d’Albert Marquet’ and we both immediately warmed to it. 13. Fauvism again, by Kees van Dongen. 14. Natalia Goncharova, picking up on French Fauvism and mixing it with her own Russian ‘Neo-Primitivism’. 15. Much more popular in France than here in UK, I’ve always liked Nicolas de Staël’s physical surfaces, shifting between figuration and abstraction.

#notebookdrawing #sketchbookdrawing #drawing #notebookdrawings #colliouretourisme by @nickpearson60

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a month ago

More photos of a drawing of a sculpture of a drawing – in progress.

A drawing, based on a wall-piece, constructed by following ideas in the drawing (and vice versa).

I wanted to extend it horizontally and take in a wider view – looking at the 3D parts of the object face-on in the drawing, rather than from the side.

Yesterday, the assembled bits and pieces (see previous post) fell off the wall while I was working on them (pieces of wood and table footballer's bar and body parts flying all over the place!). I could only work on the drawing, as everything else was clamped together to glue back in place.

1. What I had to play with. 2. Ideas for expansion. 3. Room for expansion. 4. A ripped and rough-cut piece of hardboard from a freight box that might do the trick. 5. Tracing around that that and marking it out. 6. The drawing – added to and amended.

#contemporaryart #wallbasedsculpture #drawing #inthestudio #largedrawings by @nickpearson60

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2 months ago

Photos of a drawing of a sculpture of a drawing – in progress.

A drawing, based on a wall-piece, constructed by following ideas in the drawing.

Equivalent. Reciprocal translation. Chicken and egg. Which came first?

A while ago, I made a large drawing and wall-piece simultaneously – adjusting and looping back and forth as each developed, adapting the drawing (by cutting out, over-pasting, extending, re-shaping and re-drawing) and the wall-piece (by re-making, painting, adding/repositioning elements, continually working between the two things, reacting to changes in each.

I managed to get the cut-up, re-pasted drawing, with tape, off the wall in one piece and really enjoyed making it! See my post: 1st April

Like a fool, I’ve not drawn much since then – other things to think about, like earning a living (since redundancies at Cov Uni). Also, figuring out how to mount and float it. On a shaped battened sheet of 3mm MDF, maybe . . . ? (yes @martinnewth, I agree, I also see it floating off the wall a little, casting its own shadow – nice thought, thanks).

So, here’s the second (ongoing, still untitled) piece in my ‘Equivalents’/‘Reciprocal Translations’/‘Chicken and Egg’ series (whatever I end up calling it).

I like the way the 3-D elements (e.g. the three table football grips, sticking out, top left) have translated themselves, drawn head-on (no angle, no perspective). I may extend it horizontally, requiring a turning of the head to take it all in – and see how those multiple, flat, head-on descriptions work then.

To be continued . . .

If you’ve read this far, you’re either bloody mad, or maybe as interested in this madness as I am. In which case, please comment, with your vote for which of the three series titles above you prefer. A suggestion of your own? I’d like to hear it (I may not use it, if too ‘clever’. I may not want to use it – ‘cos I didn’t think of it – but I’d like to read it anyway!).

*. *. *

Thanks to Adam at Coventry for helping me cut the bathmat backing board (which also became a printing plate, using Chinese pine soot ink block, ground down with water/gum Arabic).

#contemporaryart #wallbasedsculpture #drawing taken in London, United Kingdom by @nickpearson60

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2 months ago

A couple of weeks ago: “Diaga Grantina - Lilacs” @mead_gallery, @warwickarts with @josperrynjones and @jack_c_foster

*Pics 1 and 6: Warwick Arts Centre https://rb.gy/kym7rw

Occasionally, you come across an exhibition that ticks boxes you didn’t expect to be there (maybe never even knew about!). Work that can seem so casually constructed, disarmingly cobbled together, hung by a nail from a piece of string. Yet looking closer, drawn into the surface, we notice it is not so casual at all and fits so beautifully, so subtly in the space (and the space at the Mead Gallery is big, open and full of light). An intelligently designed show of understated, often minimal, sometimes carefully additive work in a gallery, beautifully rebuilt around it.

Sculpture that pushes natural and industrial materials – sometimes cracked or stretched to their limits – yet also, in the application of paint (sprayed, brushed or bled) has all the minimally inflected elegance of a Robert Ryman – but with a range of subtle colours (blues, reds, silvers, lilacs) and surface treatments – layered, rubbed on, rubbed off, iridescent . . . Carefully considered.

At the same time, a mixed-material, ‘studio-floor’, improvisatory feel that reminded me of Richard Tuttle and some Eric Bainbridge. But these initial readings are not fixed – nothing is here. Each element simultaneously generates multiple impressions: wings, water, air, leaves, flowers, figures, feathers, flight, rust, weight and weightlessness. Each element relates so well to its neighbour – it’s almost impossible to look at ‘a’ piece in isolation (and impossible to photograph!).

The walls became an active part of the experience – not least the shadows, making us strongly aware that natural light moves. Differently lit areas and surprising placements; satisfying sight lines; groupings that made us think of Paul Nash, forms that could be Miro. It got us talking about the best exhibitions we’d ever seen – and this one was up there!

Congratulations and thanks to the artist and @tomellmer for bringing this beautiful exhibition to Coventry – and doing it so well. I want to see it again!

#contemporarysculpture #daigagranta by @nickpearson60

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4 months ago

Congratulations to all graduating students at Coventry Fine art for a great show. It has been lovely working with you all - since you and I all first arrived at the university in 2023. Thanks for the flowers!

See more + interviews @fineartcoventry

Current 2nd years/next year’s 3rd years: I’ll try to get back to Cov for your show too - make sure you send me an invite!

See you all and good luck in all you do - it’s been a blast!

@fineartcoventry @covuni_saci #finearteducation #degreeshow by @nickpearson60

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4 months ago

Great to see a show with no agenda – other than painting. It really felt, @serpentineuk on a spring Friday, that painting is quite enough!

‘Paintings are always asking questions and each painting asks its own set of questions. Every few moves you make, you’ve set up a whole set of new problems that you then have to answer. I want to leave that openness.’ – Cecily Brown

Brown’s ‘Picture Making’ [1–7] is difficult, intuitively complex, physical and rewarding – a real pleasure to be aware of being forced to look, really hard. From paintings the size of desktop screens, to the damn-near cinematic. Activated, absorbing paint-as-material, prompting thoughts of Monet’s lilies, maybe? Visceral surfaces, teeming with imagery.

Then Sunday: could there really be two naffer, more over-used titles than ‘Threads of Life’ and ‘Heart to Heart’ (Chiharu Shiota [8–11] and Yin Xiuzhen [12–19] respectively)? But two, typically epic shows I nearly missed @hayward.gallery Fortunately, esteemed colleague @josperrynjones from Cov Uni @fineartcoventry @covuni_saci was visiting for the Shiota. We agreed to meet up – very glad we did!

Traces of use – things we carry with us; a well-used doorway, surrounded by keys, hanging from a red, vein-like web. The clothes we shape through wear, re-shaped into suitcase-cities – awaiting collection on an airport carousel (we, become those waiting for the luggage!).

Black threads in Shiota’s installation, ‘During Sleep’ – reading like an ink drawing in a photograph – is a scribbled network of knotted filaments, enclosing institutional dormitory beds. Tangled bedcovers, the absent sleeper, still present - more traces.

Xiuzhen’s was one of those shows you didn’t actually go for, but were happy you did. The well-publicised Shiota exhibition, under the marketing & insta-friendly visuals was serious + subtle work. Xiuzhen was more playful + mixed – a range of early and later work that included sculpture, mixing the artist’s clothes, travel & transport, along with some quietly violent and beautiful ceramic pieces into which clothes or other personal items had, in various ways, been embedded. Somewhere between - and both - picture and object. taken in London, England by @nickpearson60

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5 months ago

Bank holiday notebook: Frinton-on-Sea

The drawing started on the right hand side of the spread . . . but spread to the left, into the sea and some written notes.

Why did we go to Frinton, on the Essex coast? Because it was there. Because it was a fashionable and exclusive resort in Edwardian times up to the 1930s and because (as we imagined it would be) it is consequently and charmingly, a little up its (slightly faded but still appealing) self.

It didn't have a chip shop until the early 1990s and over four days, we became occasional visitors to its oldest (and only) pub the very friendly @the_lockandbarrel which opened for business in 2000!

Evening restaurant choices were not complicated by a great deal of choice, but what was there was fabulous and not at all 'faded'!

Frinton is famous for its Modernist 'seaside art deco' architecture from its pre-WWII heyday and we stayed in 'Eco Deco' (pic 2) a lovingly self-designed and built property, belonging to Penny and Richard. Penny designed, Richard built this 1920s-30s-style Modernist house a few years ago, based on the local 'Art Deco' buildings (mostly designed by Oliver Hill in the 1930s). I didn't know Hill when I first saw it and it reminded me more of my favourites, Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens. The owners live on the right side of the ground and the upper floors - and it was a pleasure to stay there in the nicely appointed apartment that was originally going to be the garage (there was even a 'Mondrian' painted by hand on the kitchen cupboard door!).

#notebookdrawing #sketchbookdrawing #drawing #essexcoastline #modernistarchitecture taken in Frinton-on-Sea by @nickpearson60

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6 months ago

'Factum 067', 2026

A wall-piece, made by following ideas in a drawing – and, back and forth, with neither order, nor hierarchy – also, a drawing, made alongside and influenced by the development of something I've made on the wall (see previous posts).

The title comes from Rauschenberg's 'Factum 1' and 'Factum 2' (1957). I've quoted these titles before (great piece, please check it out if you don't know it) combined with a slightly mutated version of the scale factor (0.677) used to scale up or down from drawing to object and object to drawing.

I’ve cleaned up the wall for pics 3 and 4 but I’ve not tried taking the drawing (1.20 x 1.31 metres) off the wall yet. Five or six layers thick in places and stuck together with wallpaper paste and stuck/stretched to the wall with gum strip tape).

I think this is it. Finished? Any comments . . . please?

#contemporaryart #wallbasedsculpture #assemblage #collage #expandedpainting #inthestudio #drawing #contemporarydrawings #experimentaldrawing @drawingpapershow @drawingprojectsuk @drawingroomlondon #robertrauschenberg by @nickpearson60

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6 months ago

A busy week

A busy week for us all at Cov University - I’m only just recovering!
Tuesday saw ‘Pandemonium’, a pop-up one-night-only show of 2nd yr work very generously curated by @tomellmer and @sarah.shalgosky at the Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, among the huge, colourful - and very present - ceramic work by world-renowned Japanese artist, Takuro Kuwata:

Pics: with Charlie Buck and his ‘Ear not Broken but Communication Failure’ (laser-cut cardboard); general view of the Tea Bowl Punk/Pandemonium private view; Jimmy Wilson, ‘Frustration!’ (mixed media); John Wilson, ‘Kiln forged, Yard Bound’ (coloured plaster and glazed ceramic); Teya Nedelcheva, ’Through the Walls’ (sublimation print/mixed media); Pat Farrell, with her ‘Clash’ (silkscreen print/mixed media); Rokshika Robinson, ‘Ah-chi-ah: Can’t Hear, Louder!’ (video projection); Ella Wilson, ‘What’s the Value?’ (mounted photographs and print bound in pulped drawings); John Wilson talking to visitor.

Wed-Fri saw my (now regular!) ‘Production Week Cardboard Sculpture Workshop’ with 30+ students from Fine Art, Graphic Design, Illustration and Foundation. A productive – and exhausting – few days in the Hyperstudio space . . . and great work. Well done, everybody!

@covuni_saci @fineartcoventry #mead_gallery #warwickartscentre #cardboardsculpture #finearteducation @coventry_print_studio @gstergee taken in Coventry, United Kingdom by @nickpearson60

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7 months ago

Sequential photos taken over the past couple of weeks of a drawing of a sculpture of a drawing. Work in progress – No title(s) yet.

I'm making something on the wall by following ideas in a drawing – but at the same time, back and forth, I'm drawing something I'm making on the wall.

This is still a work in progress - but my mate @patricks.ford suggested people might be interested in how it is developing – here we go Pat.

The scale factor of object to drawing is 0.677 (maybe that will be part of the title?). That's just how it was when I started this – so that's how it's stayed – even though everything else has changed . . . and continues to!

More later (using a combination of gum strip and wallpaper paste, I wonder if I'll ever get it off the wall?)

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#contemporaryart #wallbasedsculpture #assemblage #collage #expandedpainting #inthestudio #drawing #contemporarydrawings #experimentaldrawing @drawingpapershow @drawingprojectsuk @drawingroomlondon by @nickpearson60

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7 months ago

Photo of a drawing of a sculpture of a drawing. No title(s) yet, work in progress – 2026.

I'm making something on the wall by following ideas in a drawing – but at the same time, I'm drawing something I'm making on the wall.

It's not unusual to make drawings towards a new piece, to try to imagine it or work out various ideas in advance.

Nor is it rare to make a drawing or other image of a piece once completed, as a record or to extend it in another medium.

But I thought I'd try to develop both a large drawing and a sculptural assemblage at the same time - making adjustments to each, back and forth, from one to the other; adapting and moving both the drawing (by cutting out, over-pasting, collaging, extending and changing the shape and size of the paper and re-drawing) and the assemblage (by re-making, painting and adding/repositioning different elements) as each develops in tandem, constantly working between the two things and reacting to changes in each.

I think these are nearly done. I'll post again when I decide they are!

#contemporaryart #wallbasedsculpture #assemblage #collage #expandedpainting #inthestudio #drawing #contemporarydrawings #experimentaldrawing taken in London, United Kingdom by @nickpearson60

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8 months ago