The Erin Pearson Collection

About the Collector

I've been collecting for over twenty years now, though if I'm honest, it started long before I ever thought of it that way. It began as a feeling — noticing something in a piece that most people would walk straight past. I'd see a work and immediately know exactly the frame it was asking for, the mat, the finish, the way it wanted to be presented — before I even knew where it might hang. I spent 28 years as a picture framer, running ARTIS PURA, surrounded every day by other people's art and objects, learning piece by piece what made something worth keeping.

Everything I've collected has been chosen, not accumulated. There's a difference. I've never bought something because it was a good investment or because it filled a gap on a wall. I've bought things because they stopped me — because I could see exactly what they needed, or because I simply couldn't walk away from them. Some pieces I've had for over two decades. Some I found only recently. All of them have earned their place.

Health reasons mean I can no longer frame, and that's been its own kind of grief — losing the work I built my whole life around. But my love for what I've gathered has not gone anywhere. What doesn't sit right with me is knowing so much of it is packed away in storage, unseen and unenjoyed, when it should be out in the world being lived with. I'm not running a shop and I'm not clearing out a storeroom. This is personal — my own collection, built slowly and with real care, and now I'm looking for the next people to love these pieces the way I have.

If something here catches you the way it once caught me, I'd love for it to find its way to you.