David Hockney

I'm currently listening to the David Hockney interview on the Start the Week and I thought it would be a great idea to make a quick portrait of Hockney on the iPad. I hope this has Craft and the poetry.

Sent from my iPad

Posted via email from SIMON's posterous

Start of something good....

Copse and Road - Calke

As I look at this I can't help but think of David Hockney. Over the past few months I have become more aware of his work - especially his later work around the Wolds of East Yorkshire. Now I don't at what level this may have influenced me, if at all, but I feel it is there. Perhaps Calke Abbey has a similar effect that the Wolds has on Hockney, my family does have deep connections with this area - although I suspect the game keepers of old may have been less than charitable about my ancestors - but that is a whole new story.

Back to the present. This has been a great start I hope that it's a portent for the year. This, of course, is nonsense but you always have to live in hope. One final thing about blogging. The earlier blog entry I wrote live, actually in the woods and I found this a very powerful thing to do. Whether the prose were any good is not the point. It helped me clarify what I was experiencing - always important when dealing with any artistic endeavour. Anyway onwards and upwards.

Salt Mills...

It has taken me a few days to fully process the impact of Salts Mill on me - there was so much to take in. Where to start? Well first of all the negative. It has a lot in common with Walt Disney World - there is every opportunity to spend a lot of money of things you may well never use again but seem like such a good idea at the time. The second similarity is all pervasive character where ever you go with the mill. David Hockney is all around. His works are on display through out the public areas of the mill - whether it is in Gallery 1853 or in the restaurant or gift shop and so on. There is just no getting away from the man.

Now that is the negative here is the positive - well actually it is the same as above. I cannot think of any living artist who could carry such a display of his work and personality. Hockney can. His work's enlighten the drab, dark Yorkshire day like no other. The art work on display at 1853 is wondrous. The photo montage, the main reason for my visit, were even better than expected. You have to stand close to them to realise what acts of virtuoso they are. In an age of digital cameras it is so easy to ensure that photographs marry together if you are shooting a montage - how Hockney's were recorded on film so he had to shoot them from memory - yet they work so well.

Beyond the main gallery perhaps the most intense and rewarding experience is on the top floor. Here we have Hockney's stage designs displayed in a blacked out section of the mill floor sandwiched between another restaurant and an antique and cloths store - yet none of this distracts you from the power of the work on display and indeed the way they are displayed adds to the power.

What a great day out, great art well presented in a magnificent building which, when you consider the size of the place, somehow seems so intimate and yet is the size of a super tanker. One final note - the food is excellent as well. What more could you want?

A change of pace...

I know I have been banging on about Hockney over the past week or so but would you believe I have not really given him any great thought. Instead of photographic matters I have been using the more analytical part of my brain. I have been doing some historical research. This is not the first time I have done this - my old website is still on line - this was completed in 1996 - almost as old in WWW terms as the subject matter!

Anyway back to the present. I have been working a map of the village showing all the historical/archaeological sites/information I have discovered. It has been really enjoyable and at same time so frustrating. You always seem to take two steps forward and one back. You develop a theory based on the information at hand and then discover new information that blows it out of the water. Sometimes I just want to scream but it is very absorbing. So the photography has had to take a back seat. This may change as I am off to the Salt Mill gallery tomorrow to see more Hockney - so I suspect I may well be back to photography over the next day or so!

Some developments....

Hockney montage seem to be a very cliché photograph. So I am thinking about how to use the ideas and take them a bit further - I am not suggesting that what I might be doing is 'good' or 'better' than anyone else's work. I am just using this as a means of experimenting with photography.

One step forward....

What a strange day but also an interesting one. I have been working on the Hockney idea and frankly not getting so far. However, this is the point of experimentation - one step forward one back until you do find a way forward. As part of the , what I laughingly call, research I have used Google images and to my suprise there is a whole world out there doing the same as me. Interestingly there seems to be a trend, perhaps it is part of the curriculum, in American schools to produce this type of work. The good thing is that most of the stuff produced was ok but nothing special - so this encourages me to work at the idea further. Still at the moment it is one step forward and one back.

Where does inspiration come from?....

So where does inspiration come from? It is something you eat, see or something else, something you can't taste but it just happens. Well in my case it is David Hockney or to be more precise his photography. I have just been watching a sky arts programme about Hockney's photography and something fired off in my mind - so I came and made this photograph. Whether it is any good or note is not the point I have just started to think about things a different way and that is really good.

I have been in doldrums for the past few days about my photography. I suspect it had something to to do with the ARPS process and realisation that I may well be good enough to get a ARPS for my wildlife photography but it is something of a dead end. Anyway, whatever the reason I have been spending some time away from photography - well three days which is not long but I have been doing other things and then bang all the blood started rushing again and I am off on a new journey. Where this leads me to goodness only knows but it will be fun - I hope!

Hockney...

A wonderful day was had by all, apart from a bit of a cock up on my part, when my good friend David and I hit the galleries in London. The plan was to go and see the Turner and the Masters at the Tate and then work our way up to the National Portrait Gallery for the Portrait Photographer of the Year exhibition. The rest of the day we would fill as we saw fit. Well we did the Turner exhibition and I have to say it left me somewhat cold. The idea was to show Turner's work alongside his influences. The problem for me was that in many respects Turner did not come out very well - all it demonstrated to me was that Turner had his limitations and that whilst much of his work is of the highest standards he is mortal. Still it is worth while going to see but expect crowds.

After lunch we explored the Tate and this in itself was a joy. I especially enjoyed seeing the Pre Raphaelite work after the recent excellent documentary series on the painters and the scandalously enjoyable TV drama. We walked out of this gallery and wonder a bit further into a large room and there was one of the painting I had wanted to see - the David Hockney paintings of East Yorkshire. The room has three identical paintings made up of 50 panels of a copse near to Bridlington. The first is the actual painting and the other two are digital copies on a 1:1 scale. I could wax on about these paitings for hours - just to say it made our day.

After this it was a bit of an anti climax and to an extent that is what the Portrait Photographer of the year exhibition was. I found much of the work cold and impersonal. I am not sure that using models to enact something really is a portrait but it was accepted so what do I know. Perhaps the best portrait for me was self portrait of the photographer when he had chicken pox.

So a good day out and filled me with inspiration. The journey home was entertaining as well as I got into a conversation with a young mother and her 5 month old son. She had just been to the Argentinian embassy to renew her passport as they were both travelling to Argentina in December for her brother's wedding. Good luck to her - she'll need it and what an example of the indomitable human spirit.