BLOSSOM Street Gallery, close by Micklegate Bar in York, is celebrating its fifth birthday with a solo exhibition of paintings, reliefs and sculptural ceramics by Warthill artist Tim Pearce.

Gallery owner Kim Oldfield has reconfigured the gallery space to enhance the area dedicated to showcasing mainly Yorkshire artists in both 2D and 3D work, and Pearce’s work fits perfectly into this new design as he is both a painter and a sculptor.

He is a familiar figure on the York art scene, having taken part in York Open Studios in recent years at his home studio in the village of Warthill east of York and he has exhibiting in several galleries in York and beyond. Among these, he has held solo shows at Pocklington Arts Centre, the Whitestone Gallery at St Peter's School, York, York Hospital and the University of York’s Norman Rea Gallery.

York Press:

Mechanical Form, glazed stoneware ceramic, by Tim Pearce

His love of Cubism is a principal influence on his artwork, along with a fascination for contemporary architecture, machinery and dramatic landscapes. He paints mainly with acrylics, enabling him to inject a sense of movement and vibrancy into his canvases.

Pearce's 3D work is created largely in ceramics and ranges from small sculptural indoor pieces to large, modular garden sculpture. To make these, he rolls out sheets of clay and forms them into shaped slabs that are allowed to dry partially before assembling them into the final sculpture, and these are then fired and glazed.

Three of his large garden pieces have been assembled in the gallery to give a dramatic central focus to a show. that will run until September 14, open every day except on Sundays.

York Press:

How Stean Gorge, acrylic on canvas, by Tim Pearce

Pearce's versatility in both 2D and 3D reflects his passionate interest in the multi-media nature of 20th century art and its capacity to "encourage a personal exploration of its aesthetic vocabulary".

"This very selective show of work offers a rare opportunity to reveal something of the link between my largely representational painting and my dominantly abstract sculpture, both disciplines being characterised by a cubo/futurist sensitivity to the use of space, form, colour, illusionistic ambiguity and, most especially, rhythmical structure," he says.

Influences here emerge from such diverse sources as modular forms in nature, industrial machinery and the architecture of Frank Gehry, "Such an all-embracing responsiveness very much springs from a fulfilling career as an art educator in South Yorkshire schools, involving a daily engagement with skills in a wide range of creative media areas," says Pearce.

York Press:

Cubist Guitar, glazed stoneware ceramic, by Tim Pearce

"In terms of techniques, paintings are usually built up in veils of acrylic colour whilst ceramics are mainly slab constructed by draping clay over improvised formers, cutting and joining when leather hard and eventually glazing to stoneware temperatures."

The aforementioned three larger tower pieces at the epicentre of this exhibition were made in sections, before assembling on vertical rods, and have been brought in from garden locations to show indoors for the first time at Blossom Street Gallery. Meanwhile, a recent interest in wall- mounted reliefs provides a link between Pearce's 2D and 3D work.

To learn more at first hand, gallery visitors can meet the artist to discuss his work next Saturday (September 1) between 11am and 1pm.