Artist Richard Pearce’s life is so closely bound with the sea it’d be no surprise to find saltwater running through his veins. He hears, watches and paints it in all its many moods, he lives just metres from the jagged-toothed rocks of Bryher’s storm-lashed west coast, and over the years he’s picked up his fair share of ‘treasure’ from Scilly’s many shipwrecks.
Not surprisingly, Richard’s studio is just a pebble’s throw from the sea too. In fact, move it a metre or two forwards and it would be on Bryher’s Great Par beach. The granite-walled shed was built in the 19th century to house the Golden Eagle pilot gig. It had been abandoned for decades until, with the Duchy of Cornwall’s permission, Richard restored it. Cash and materials were scarce, but the universe provided: a storm stripped a passing ship of its cargo of building planks, so Richard used them to give the studio a roof.
As studios go, it’s hard to beat. The small wooden door from the island’s sandy shoreside track is clad in giant waxy aeoniums which threaten to engulf it. Step inside and through the window at the far end you gaze at some of Richard’s inspirations - Great Par’s azure waters and mighty rocks such as Castle Bryher. The transparent light is any artist’s dream. All around, paint brushes in jam jars and half-finished canvases jostle for space with cards and finished paintings. Just being here is an experience in itself.
Typically, Richard’s paintings are characterised by turquoise seas, a shard of silver sand and a yacht. They’re pared down, simple, idealised. They have certainly proved popular over the years, with Ikea having turned his paintings into postcards and The Art Group publishing them all over the world. If you’re on Bryher, you’ll see them on the walls of the Hell Bay Hotel, and you can buy them direct from Richard’s studio or from Bryher’s gallery.
Richard loves watching the changing light and colours, then translating their essence onto the canvas. “By honing everything down to the most minimal, a painting takes on a life of its own,” he says. “A sand bar, a simple shard of sand striking through the shallows, that’s enough.”
What about the days when it’s blowing a hooli and the sea is whipped up into galloping white horses? “I paint those too,” he says. “But people don’t like those paintings so much. I guess I’ve become known for the ‘Wall’s ice cream colours’ – turquoise and cream – that most visitors associate with Scilly.”
At the end of a day’s painting in the studio, Richard does the daily commute home – a one-minute amble or dash (depending on the weather) across the beach to the School House, once inhabited by the island’s schoolteacher. Teetering on the rocks, the building’s relationship with the sea is as intimate as the studio’s. “From the porch we can hear the tug of the tide on the stones and the cries of the oystercatchers,” he says. “The sea regularly comes over the garden wall. We’ve even had seals coming in.”
If the sea runs through Richard’s veins, so does Scilly. The Pearce family have inhabited the archipelago since the 1830s. One of six siblings, Richard was born not on Bryher but on St. Mary’s. During his childhood, off-islands such as tiny Bryher, which then had no electricity or cars, seemed a world away. But eventually, wife in tow, he moved to the wild one-mile-long island of just 92 residents.
Richard initially worked not as an artist but as a crofter. “Our smallholding on Bryher had the biggest herd on the island – five cows and two pigs. We milked the cows in what is now the Crab Shack at Hell Bay. In summer, we sold the milk to the island’s bed and breakfasts and to the campsite – we’d leave out churns with people’s initials on them, to collect. To make ends meet, we also ran a B&B and grew tatties and daffodils.”
The switch to painting was – literally – an accident. There had been a shipwreck and Richard and other islanders were scrambling on the rocks to recover its cargo of pit props to use as firewood. But Richard did his back in so was forced to spend the next few weeks flat on the floor gazing at the ceiling. “It was the wrong kind of wrecking,” he laughs. The days felt long and Richard was itching to get back into the fields, so his wife and daughter brought him some oil paints to pass the time.
“My father was an artist and used oils, and I remember the house smelling of linseed oil when I was a child. He taught me and my siblings how to paint, and I’d done water colours as a hobby,” says Richard. “Once I started painting on Bryher I put on an exhibition at the community centre and to my amazement people bought my paintings.” His career as an artist was launched.
Initially he painted and sold his works at the house, but he found people reluctant to walk up the garden path. So, the search for a studio began, with the ruined gig shed proving the perfect solution. After around 20 years Richard switched to acrylics, which had the advantage of drying faster than oils.
Now, over four decades on, Richard’s studio continues to be one of Bryher’s must-visit destinations. “I’m very lucky to live in a place that has so many visitors,” he says. “I sometimes try to break away from my signature ‘boat on a sand bar surrounded by turquoise sea’, but that seems to be what people want. People who came here on holiday and saw my paintings as kids return wanting to buy them for themselves. For them they’re pieces of nostalgia. I guess I can’t complain.”
Image credit: adjbrown.com
