Bruce Edward Pearson, was born at Newmarket, Suffolk on 20 September 1950, his mother’s maiden name was Parsons. Bruce studied at Great Yarmouth College of Art & Design 1969-1970 and at Leicester Polytechnic 1970-1973, graduating B.A. in Fine Art. He married at Chesterfield, Derbyshire in 1982, Sara F. Oldfield and they had two daughters. A painter in oil and watercolour, printmaker and a freelance illustrator on a wide range of natural history books, magazines and journals, including writing and illustrating ‘An Artist on Migration’, one chapter of which centred in West Africa, was filmed and presented by Bruce on BBC2 television in a programme ‘Beyond Timbuktu’. Other illustrations included ‘Rare Mammals of the World’ and the ‘Gem Guide to Zoo Animals’ and in 1978 Bruce was elected member of Society of Wildlife Artists and later its President. Bruce continued to exhibit larger fine art works throughout the UK, Europe and in the USA and locally from 1995 included The Wildlife Art Gallery, Lavenham, Suffolk and in Norfolk. A director of World Land Trust 2009-2015 of Blyth House, Bridge Street, Halesworth, Suffolk. The author of ‘Troubled Waters: Trailing the Albatross, an artist’s journey’ (2012) and ‘In a New Light’ (2003), he lives at 5 Marshall Road, Cambridge. www.brucepearson.net
“For the past 45 years I have worked as an artist completing private commissions from individuals, museums and institutions. By invitation I have participated in international art events and exhibitions in USA, France, Holland, Spain, Poland, Ecuador and Peru; and in the UK I have contributed work to a number of group exhibitions and undertaken a range of solo commercial gallery shows.

Early on my work was largely as a freelance illustrator on a wide range of natural history books, magazines and journals, including writing and illustrating An Artist on Migration (1991). One chapter of the book focused on the seasonal floods in the Sahel region of West Africa and that part of the migration story was subsequently filmed and shown on BBC2 television in a programme called Beyond Timbuctu which I presented. Other illustration work was for the Rare Mammals of the World and the Gem Guide to Zoo Animals books published by Harper Collins and throughout that time I continued to exhibit larger fine art works when the opportunities arose.

As well as painting and printmaking, early projects also involved filming in Antarctica as a director-cameraman on an idea developed in collaboration with friend and colleague, Peter Prince. We made a wildlife documentary film called The Private Life of the Fur Seal which was subsequently shown on BBC1 television. A second programme, The 150 Million Tonne Shrimp which told a far more complex Antarctic story, was shown on BBC2 television two years later as part of the World About Series. Finally I was commissioned by Channel 4 Television to write and present the six part Birdscape series about a range of British landscapes and the lives of some of the birds, and some of the people associated with them; the series aired in 1991.

Throughout the time working on film projects I continued to exhibit fine art works when the opportunities arose, My studio is now filled with a huge number of drawings, paintings, notebooks, and sketches reflecting visits over many years to the Arctic and Antarctica, Africa, many countries and regions of Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South America. There are still opportunities to travel and find new ideas, see new species and experience different landscapes. But over the last few years the obsessive urge to head off into the field at every opportunity has transferred itself into an equally strong desire to work in the studio, searching instead through the accumulated volumes of creative debris for fresh starting points.”