Nick Pearson

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A busy week A busy week for us all at Cov University this week - I’m only just recovering!Tuesday saw ‘Pandemonium’ a po...
08/03/2026

A busy week

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

Pics: with Charlie Buck and his ‘Ear not Broken but Communication Failure’ (laser-cut cardboard); General view of the Tea Bowl Punk/Pandemonium mash-up; 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!

Too busy in Rome, enjoying Rome, to post. Here’s ‘Day 3, pt 2’ now I’m back home (1-11 from Vatican Museums/Sistine Chap...
05/02/2026

Too busy in Rome, enjoying Rome, to post. Here’s ‘Day 3, pt 2’ now I’m back home (1-11 from Vatican Museums/Sistine Chapel). . .

1. ‘Gallery of Maps’: 40 large, fresco Italian maps, c.1580
2. Raphael, ‘School of Athens’, 1508. Surrounded by Euclid, Averroes, Pythagoras, etc., Plato and Aristotle walk towards an opposite mural depicting a victorious Christianity. Raphael didn’t complete the last 2 of 4 rooms as, on the night of his 37th birthday, weakened by pneumonia, he passed out during s*x (source: Vasari). Too embarrassed to admit it to physicians his mistress called, they treated him for something else – which killed him!
3–5. Giogio Morandi, 1959 drawing and ‘Still Life’, 1957. Things and the observed relations between them, painted with such presence, yet remaining like half-remembered memories of things. Then – a brave acquisition! – Francis Bacon, ‘Study for a Pope I’, 1961.
6–8. half of Michelangelo’s great, High Renaissance ‘Last Judgement’ (1535–41) was under bloody scaffolding! Disappointing – as I was looking forward to the portrait of his enemy, Master of Ceremonies da Cesesna, depicted in Hell with donkey’s ears and a snake biting off his privates, bottom right!). Great job of the ceiling (1508–12) though!
9. Before Julius II got Michelangelo to redo the ceiling, it was decorated with the popular blue background and stars – as around this doorway, given an added trompe-l’oeil curtain effect.
10. On leaving, this fabulous, unlabelled Roman relic – a drinking trough or sarcophagus (?) with mask – beautifully placed.
11–12. Before the day ended (and Campari called!) we had to get to Santa Maria della Vittoria for Bernini’s ‘Ecstasy of St Teresa’ (1652), depicting the 16th nun’s description of her ‘ecstatic’ meeting with an angel – Teresa describing him ‘piercing her very entrails’ with his spear and the look on her face suggests something a bit more worldly than spiritual!
13–15. On the way to that Campari, San Carlo alle Quattre Fontane, designed by Francesco Borromini. I liked the spaces, ceiling and this staircase (which I guess doesn’t get photographed too often!). This is lovely, flowing, unusually ‘minimalist’ Baroque.

Day one on a joint birthday, long w/e to Rome. Only been here half a day and I’ve eaten too much already!We visited the ...
31/01/2026

Day one on a joint birthday, long w/e to Rome. Only been here half a day and I’ve eaten too much already!
We visited the Pantheon this evening. Beautiful, over-grand and really impressive. Built originally by Marcus Agrippa in around 25 BCE. Rebuilt and ‘modernised’ by Hadrian in 125 AD - making it, in its current Hadrianic form , Rome’s oldest, fully intact Roman-period building - at around 1,900 years old!
1-7 exterior and interior shots and (8) creatures from the Pantheon Fountain in the piazza.

Highlights, from the past couple of weeks (Serpentine and Workplace): ‘Transforming the gallery into a listening space'....
29/01/2026

Highlights, from the past couple of weeks (Serpentine and Workplace):

‘Transforming the gallery into a listening space'. I’ve always liked Peter Doig as a painter and he has a fabulously catholic taste in music, which I like. Yes, we can all listen to music as we work, but Doig has a really absorbent ear. I liked the idea of the show, but we were pretty irritated by the people sitting on the floor ‘watching’ the guest DJ playing his choice (through beautifully sculptural vintage speakers) in addition to Doig’s playlist. Great music, but I was too conscious of trying not to crush people’s fingers with my leather-soled size 9s, as I tried (unsuccessfully) to look squarely at some large paintings!

1–6: ‘2 Girls’, 2017; Klangfilm Euronor Jnr Speaker C.A. (1950s) and ‘Studiofilm & Roller Club’, 2025; ‘Lion in the Road’, 2015; ‘Music of the Future’, 2002–07 (our favourite, – with ‘2 Girls’!); ‘Shadow’ 2019; People with their backs to the paintings – ‘watching’ the music!

‘"The Shape of Things" considers material presence and poetic restraint . . . Each artist engages with materiality, not merely as medium but as subject: a site of transformation, reverie, and resistance . . . a reconsideration of how form can hold emotion, how minimal gesture can evoke depth, and how the physical artwork, in its quiet persistence, can become a vessel for the ineffable.’ – Workplace Gallery website

Good to see a small work there by my old mate, Bob Law (no longer with us) perhaps better known for his more austere, emotionally intense – black or white paintings with thin, inset borders. "Examples of early-60s minimalism" – but he told me he was just lying in the middle of a Cornish field, stoned and 'feeling' the edge! Nice show. Good to discover William McKeown too.

7-9: Bob Law, 'Wooden Box Sculpture with Obelisk, Drawing for Sculpture', 1963; Malcolm Bradley, 'Untitled (dummy copy'), 2025; William McKeown, 'Painting No. 271, 2009

In a side meeting room at Workplace, hung another, unlabelled painting that we both liked (No. 10) I’m guessing its Laura Lancaster – can anybody confirm that? Title?

A great end of first semester exhibition of work last week, created as part of the ‘Making’ module by 1st year Fine Art ...
08/12/2025

A great end of first semester exhibition of work last week, created as part of the ‘Making’ module by 1st year Fine Art students at Coventry. Here I am in the first photo (taken by my esteemed colleague and leader for this module, @ jack_c_foster) – looking like I was the only person putting it up! In fact we both did – helped very much by Technical Demonstrator and our good mate, Adam Rushton. The students really pulled together and organised everything else for publicity and the opening event on Thursday (great bar!).

After the pic of the back of my head, works are depicted clockwise, as hung:
Lucy Campbell and Rayne Ashby; Rayne Ashby; Tia Downes; Lewis Watson; Vik Challis-Martin; Alicja Grela, Group monoprints; Saif Ali; Group ceramics (abstracting familiar logos); Lucy Campbell; Derya Sharif; installation shots (x2).

Extra pic taken by 3rd year, – thanks Richie - fluffed it!






# covuni_saci

‘Nuff said!- thanks
14/10/2025

‘Nuff said!
- thanks

One last (late) despatch from Bilbao. A really good career-spanning exhibition of late Modernist painting, again at the ...
28/06/2025

One last (late) despatch from Bilbao. A really good career-spanning exhibition of late Modernist painting, again at the Guggenheim, of Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011).

‘Helen Frankenthaler: Painting without Rules’, starts with her (literally!) ‘ground’-breaking and influential ‘pour and stain’ canvases of the 1950s and 60s, (after seeing Po***ck’s ‘drip’ paintings of the 1940s-50s and encouraged by critic Clement Greenberg). In a period characterised by a search for flatness and away from illusion, these were so flat that the paint stained, rather than sat on the surface of the canvas. The show goes on to follow the development of her lesser - known, large (and much less ‘flat’) abstract paintings – and some sculpture – of later years, into the 1990s.

1. Installation
2. ‘Western Dream’, 1957
3. ‘Cape (Provincetown)’, 1964
4. ‘The Human Edge’, 1967
5. ‘Mornings’, 1971
6. ‘Ocean Drive West #1’, 1974
7. ‘Plexus’, 1976
8. ‘Eastern Light’, 1982
9. Anthony Caro ‘Ascending the Stairs’, 1979-83
10. Anthony Caro ‘Ascending the Stairs’, 1979-83 -2
New Yorker Helen Frankenthaler met the English sculptor Anthony Caro in 1959, on his first trip to New York and he became one of her closest friends. Both were interested in what the other was doing and partly influenced by the American contemporary sculptor David Smith. Frankenthaler made ‘Matisse Table’ and other sculptures at Caro’s London studio in the summer of 1972, approaching sculpture the same way she painted – intuitively. 
11. ‘Matisse Table’,1972
12. ‘Star Gazing’, 1989
13. ‘Janus’, 1990
14. ‘The Rake’s Progress’, 1991
15. Installation
16. ‘Requiem’, 1992
17. ‘Borrowed Dream’,
18. ‘Fantasy Garden’, 1992
19. ‘Cassis’, 1995

More info on Guggenheim Bilbao’s website

Two weeks in the northern Spanish Basque - ‘Euskara’ - region had to include Frank Gehry’s great deconstructivist master...
24/06/2025

Two weeks in the northern Spanish Basque - ‘Euskara’ - region had to include Frank Gehry’s great deconstructivist masterpiece Guggenheim Bilbao - as famous and just as fabulous as the art inside it - and there’s some good stuff! Here’s a selection . . .
1 - 2. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Frank Gehry, 1997); 3. Jeff Koons, ‘Puppy’, 1992; 4. Jackson Po***ck, ‘Circumcision’ 1946; 5. Mark Rothko, ‘Untitled’, 1952-53; 6. Robert Motherwell, ‘The Voyage: Ten Years After’, 1961; 7. John Chamberlain, ‘Delores James’, 1962; 8-9. Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Barge’ (and detail) 1962-63; 10-12. Cy Twombly, ‘Nine Discourses on Commodus’, 1963; 13. Clifford Still, ‘Untitled’, 1964; 14. Sigmar Polke, Kathreiner’s Morning Wood’, 1969-79; 15. Ellsworth Kelly, ‘Yellow Curve I’, 1972; 16. Jean-Michel Basquiet. ‘Moses and the Egyptians’, 1982; 17. Richard Serra, ‘Snake’, 1994-97 and ‘A Matter of Time’ (commissioned installation) 2005; 18. Jenny Holzer, ‘Installation for Bilbao’, 1997-2007; 19. Aitor Ortiz, ‘Light Walls 011, 2005; 20. El Anatsui, ‘Rising Sea’, 2019.

And there was more . . . a revelation for me as it was the first time I’d ever ‘got’ Cy Twombly - I still doubt I could explain it - and I still don’t understand the ponderous titles . . . But we both got it!!

Some very strangely beautiful, religious wooden sculptures, in the collection of the Baroque-period Basilica Santa María...
16/06/2025

Some very strangely beautiful, religious wooden sculptures, in the collection of the Baroque-period Basilica Santa María del Corso in The Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastian. Mostly 13th-14th century along with a small (unframed) El Greco canvas (one of his several ‘Stigmas of Saint Francis’, c.1690)
hanging among them. This church has always supported modern and contemporary art and there’s lots dotted around, from figurative drawings and stained-glass windows, to large abstract ‘tachiste’ paintings - but these mostly small, sometimes worm-holed, often polychromatic figures are the real stars!

Dutch Curtain IV, 2025charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencil, chalk and collage on paper. 71 x 51.5 cm “Beginning in the ...
13/06/2025

Dutch Curtain IV, 2025

charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencil, chalk and collage on paper. 71 x 51.5 cm

“Beginning in the 1640s, a new motif appeared in Dutch painting that would persist in a variety of ways for the rest of the century: the addition of an illusionistically painted curtain over the nominal painted surface of the image. These painted curtains almost always mimic the scale, construction, and appearance of actual curtains that were used to cover paintings at the time. By appropriating a contemporary component of display for artistic practice, artists charged (and blurred) the distinction between the object and its site of display in ways that are highly valuable for exploring the shifting dialogue between illusion and reality in Dutch painting.”

From ‘Parrhasius and the art of display: The illusionistic curtain in seventeenth-century Dutch painting’, by Robert Fucci.

This one is nicked from Hendricks Cornelisz. van Vilet’s Interior of the Ouse Kerk, Delf, 16XX

Very enjoyable private view on Thursday last week of a really good, well-designed exhibition of exemplary contemporary p...
09/06/2025

Very enjoyable private view on Thursday last week of a really good, well-designed exhibition of exemplary contemporary painting!

Well done for putting on a great show in Coventry University’s Delia Derbyshire Building Gallery (and congrats to technical staff, Carl and Adam for their brilliant input!).

It’s on until July 4th - go and see it!

painting

Dutch Curtain III, 2025charcoal, chalk, ink wash,coloured crayon and collage on paper. 71 x 51.5 cm"Beginning in the 164...
18/05/2025

Dutch Curtain III, 2025

charcoal, chalk, ink wash,coloured crayon and collage on paper. 71 x 51.5 cm

"Beginning in the 1640s, a new motif appeared in Dutch painting that would persist in a variety of ways for the rest of the century: the addition of an illusionistically painted curtain over the nominal painted surface of the image. These painted curtains almost always mimic the scale, construction, and appearance of actual curtains that were used to cover paintings at the time. By appropriating a contemporary component of display for artistic practice, artists charged (and blurred) the distinction between the object and its site of display in ways that are highly valuable or exploring the shifting dialogue between illusion and reality in Dutch painting.”

From 'Parrhasius and the art of display: The illusionistic curtain in seventeenth-century Dutch painting', by Robert Fucci

This one is nicked from Jan Vermeer's 'Allegory of Faith', c.1670–72

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