Hockney and Nature

Just got back from seeing the David Hockney exhibition in London. What a visual roller coaster of color and nature. I was particularly interested by the fact that everyone who had already seen it had all loved different art works. By the time I went, I was extremely curious to see what paintings would have an impact on me.

I loved his earlier landscapes of California and England and the Grand Canyon. I also needed to sit down after seeing all the colour and incredible design in his group of paintings of cut trees! What an explosion of nature and seasons.

Hockney’s foray into iPad art was illuminating. It is wonderful when artists go beyond their strengths and experiment with new mediums, and what better subject matter than nature and the changing of the seasons.

It’s good when artists experiment. The following is a study for a larger painting I was working on in 1999. It was the beginning of images with simplistic lines and graphic design. It’s a patchwork of fields. Nature is always a good place to start.

Study for Patchwork Fantasy. Tempera on handmade paper. (cm 43x28)