Spain is a richly diverse country, scorchingly hot for much of the year, always vibrant in colour. Andalucia’s sun-drenched landscape, the big skies, the passionate people, the flamboyant festivals were what it took to liberate the artist in Alan Pearson, when he retired there in 2007.
“For some expats it’s just a world of sun, sangria, and siestas but from the start all I really wanted to do was capture it on canvas,” he says.
He bought a house in a small village near Ronda, threw himself into the local culture, explored the history, learned the language, took lessons in Flamenco guitar-playing. Later during the Covid lockdown, he poured his love of Spain in a couple of novels.
“I walked hundreds of miles in the National Park of Grazalema, where the limestone peaks filled half of the horizon,” he remembers. “It was inspiring beyond words so I wanted to capture it in art.”
Certainly it was a different world from the one he‘d left behind. Raised on the Canterbury Avenue estate, educated at Great Horton Secondary, he spent most of his working life in engineering, while living and raising a family in Queensbury.
Many of his earliest paintings had been black and white evocations of the gloom of the Bradford mills he knew well, having dismantled the machinery in hundreds of them as they closed during the catastrophic decline of the textile industry.
“I began to paint properly with the brightest of palettes almost as soon as I arrived in Spain,” he continues. “One of the local painters joined with me to form a small colony of talented artists.”
He learned from them and even won a competition to create a poster for the town’s carnival – as well as exhibiting in galleries in Malaga.
“Without a doubt the bright lights, the total freedom and open-air lifestyle was an inspiration.”
He has wonderful memories of his eight years abroad but after returning for his daughter’s wedding and falling under the spell of Yorkshire’s east coast where she lived, he sensed it was time to come home. “To be honest the months of relentless heat in the summer did wear me down and I had grandchildren I wanted to see growing up.”
By the time he had resettled in Keighley, in 2020, he was firmly established as a member of the British Guild of Aviation Artist, exhibiting at the prestigious Mall Galleries, in London. “I was very proud to be exhibiting regularly with some of the best aviation artists in England, selling steadily,” he says.
To understand his appeal, look at the magnificent painting of a Tomcat, admire the sleek lines, strength and power of the American swing-wing fighter as it cuts away into the wide blue yonder.
It’s true to say that Alan’s national reputation as an artist is based on a series of inspiring oil paintings of passenger planes, supersonic jets, warplanes, superbly accurate down to the tiniest detail. “It’s my background in engineering and technical drafting which makes me want to get everything absolutely right,” he suggests. “And those who buy in this market are absolute sticklers for authenticity – and enjoy the super-realism of my style.”
Actually, you have to go back to his childhood to find the beginning of his interest. “I was one of the Airfix and Matchbox kids,” he laughs. “Painstakingly assembling the kits and lovingly decorating them.”
Having a pint with friends in The Victoria, in Sandy Lane, his eyes lit on a photograph on the wall of trolley buses in Tyrell Street. “It triggered memories of catching buses there with my father when we were both on our way to work, the starlings overhead, the sounds of traffic, the atmosphere of the city back in the day.”
From this came a body of nostalgic paintings on his native city which will strike a chord with many readers.
Alan now lives near Oakworth and loves to walk locally – in what has become known as Brontëland – and farther afield, always a camera with him to collect material for new paintings. Totally self-taught, he normally works in oils, slowly and meticulously building up detail, perspective and colour, but is currently experimenting with watercolours.
“I was anxious not to be trapped in a regimented niche,” he considers. “And the wet-on-wet technique is something I’m learning and enjoying the freedom it brings.”
A man of many parts and an endlessly fertile imagination, he is toying with ideas for a new departure into wildlife painting – again with the flight motif. Some of them may perhaps feature in the exhibition in May of the Saltaire Art Club, of which he’s a member.
All his paintings capture a sense of place and have a story to tell, whether of the pulsating heat and distant horizons of Andalucia or of a murmuration of starlings in central Bradford as a bus pulls out bound for Bankfoot.