Episode 17 – Artist and Author Pearl Bates

Audacious art for colourful minds . I’ve been drawing and writing for as long as I can remember. To this day, I always keep a pen and notebook to hand. They are my talismans. Characters, creatures and ideas tend to hang around and pester me until I have rendered them in ink or paint. I couldn’t really tell you where they come from, but I take inspiration from all kinds of places – for example nature, street style, high fashion, music, film, theatre, dance, or architecture. Sometimes I’ll spot someone in a café, through a window or across the street, and I feel compelled to try and capture whatever it was that sparked my attention. It could be something about their energy, or the way they walked, or the way they were daydreaming.

My art has been collected all over the world, and I’ve had exhibitions in New York City, London, Zurich, Marbella, Berlin, Antwerp, and Santa Barbara, California. Recent commissions include a ten-piece mural in central Brighton, UK, illustrations for the international virtual opera project Vopera, and artwork for East Sussex College’s Black History Month campaign.

I graduated from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art in London with a degree in theatre design, and spent a brief time working in the film and TV industry before moving to Berlin and then New York City, where I focused on my art. I’m currently based on the UK’s South Coast, where I work from a studio that overlooks a castle and has a kitchen well-stocked with hot-chocolate.