Ian Pearsall ( b. 1967 )
Personal Profile
"I was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia in 1967 to parents from this City of Stoke-On-Trent.
We moved to Malawi when I was one".
"At Sixteen I made the choice to leave my parents behind and come to their home that runs in my blood. I'd visited every three years for the family holiday and the big long lines of terraced houses and black gable ends etched themselves into my consciousness."
"I don't remember the smoke but I remember the Shelton Bar sky. I remember it as a blackened blight through the windows of the bus on the way, daily to Newcastle-Under-Lyme college where I painted for A Level and got to grips with the huge cultural and social shift in my life. I loved college, and I left there with a BTec in Art & Design and headed down river, so to speak, for Nottingham Polytechnic. I left there with my B.A (Hons) Degree in Design, but I was an Artist."
"I flirted with London for a few years, and lived very briefly in Paris thereafter.
I travelled, hitchhiking usually."
"The History of Art came alive through The Tate; The National Gallery, Le Louvre, The Uffizi, The Vatican and many more besides, but the inspiration really happened when I returned. I spotted The Top Works Bottle kiln whilst walking my dog and the inspiration started and I produced The Magnificant 47 (photgraphy). I spent the next ten years walking the streets of this great conurbation finding my family's connection to it and finding a way of making sense of it through my drawings. I met poet Lindsay Bainbridge and writer Dave Proudlove whose kindred spirits, and words, resonate deeply with my subject. I met Edgar Broughton who adds dimensions hitherto unexplored previously.. together we work with Phil Shallcross, the photographer and move in another tangent."
"The post industrial landscape is my continuing inspiration heavy with splintered memories."
Barewall are delighted to be working with with Ian Pearsall as an artist. It started with the Magnificant 47 photo college and now he returns to Barewall with his Potteries Sketchbook collection capturing the Potteries streets and backs as it is today. We love them and we hope you will too.
