Over the weekend I had the lucky privilege to go to see the David Hockney exhibition with two friends Jan & Jane. The tickets were booked ages ago and it seemed like the day would never come. Finally on Saturday we met and caught the train from Diss to Liverpool Street Station.
Jan is a great cook and when she mentioned that maybe we could have a picnic on the train, I was thrilled, we had rolls with roasted vegetables & ham, macarons, crisps & juice...however this is a picture of Jane's Chocolate browniesI wish I had one beside me now!The exhibition was amazing, brilliant, inspired & uplifting and blew me away completely. David Hockney is 74 and still paints almost every day. His canvases for this show are huge and he seems to get more & more inspired the more he paints.The show is titled "A bigger picture" and it was so good to see something so expansive & vibrant when all you hear all day long on the news is doom, gloom, recession & death.....the microcosm of our daily lives, lived small. He had the luxury of being given all 13 rooms of the Royal Academy to fill as he wanted. He's done one hell of a great job. The pictures are all landscapes but like no landscape you've ever seen unless it's Van Gogh's. The colours jump off the wall & march around singing. Hockney has gone back to his Yorkshire roots & seems to be in love with the trees, flowers and seasons of that small pocket of this small island. It seems he can never get enough of the changing scenery in that corner of the world.There is such positivity in the work. He's embraced technology and has been using an ipad to paint with.51 huge prints of these ipad paintings line the walls of the biggest gallery taking you through all 12 months of the year culminating in a whopping painting made of 32 smaller canvases in oils titled "The arrival of Spring", you can almost hear the trumpets.It was particularly wonderful to see all this inside the gallery as it's all happening outside in the lanes & forest all around us here too. As Hockney says "It's as if you'd poured cream over all the hedges when the may blossom comes out". It's opened my eyes to all around me and instead of just green fields & white blossom, I now see purple light in the shadows and orange trunks on the trees.
As a short aside & to bring you back to the real world...before we went in to the RA we had a few minutes to explore Fortnum & Mason across Picadilly. They have the most amazing window display happening for the diamond jubilee at the moment, here are some photos and a short video from their website. The colours are inspired and very, very clever. I feel a cushion collection coming on!!!
I started this blog when I moved to the UK with my husband Ricardo the Magnificent. After losing him to liver cancer in 2010 I decided to move back to my home town in Melbourne, Australia.
As political philosopher Thomas Paine would declare, "The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion".
with two friends Jan & Jane. The tickets were booked ages ago and it seemed like the day would never come. Finally on Saturday we met and caught the train from Diss to Liverpool Street Station.
Jan is a great cook and when she mentioned that maybe we could have a picnic on the train, I was thrilled, we had rolls with roasted vegetables & ham, macarons, crisps & juice...however this is a picture of Jane's Chocolate brownies
I wish I had one beside me now!
The exhibition was amazing, brilliant, inspired & uplifting and blew me away completely. David Hockney is 74 and still paints almost every day. His canvases for this show are huge and he seems to get more & more inspired the more he paints.
The show is titled "A bigger picture" and it was so good to see something so expansive & vibrant when all you hear all day long on the news is doom, gloom, recession & death.....the microcosm of our daily lives, lived small. He had the luxury of being given all 13 rooms of the Royal Academy
to fill as he wanted. He's done one hell of a great job. The pictures are all landscapes but like no landscape you've ever seen unless it's Van Gogh's. The colours jump off the wall & march around singing. Hockney has gone back to his Yorkshire roots & seems to be in love with the trees, flowers and seasons of that small pocket of this small island. It seems he can never get enough of the changing scenery in that corner of the world.There is such positivity in the work. He's embraced technology and has been using an ipad to paint with.
51 huge prints of these ipad paintings line the walls of the biggest gallery taking you through all 12 months of the year culminating in a whopping painting made of 32 smaller canvases in oils titled "The arrival of Spring", you can almost hear the trumpets.
It was particularly wonderful to see all this inside the gallery as it's all happening outside in the lanes & forest all around us here too. As Hockney says "It's as if you'd poured cream over all the hedges when the may blossom comes out". It's opened my eyes to all around me and instead of just green fields & white blossom, I now see purple light in the shadows and orange trunks on the trees.
3 comments:
Oh to be in England , amazing. Lots of love Suez
My Mum went to his degree show in 195????
Great pictures,
Fr. Dave
It is amazing Thomsey & it's not even April yet!!
Father Dave...WOW. I think some of his talent rubbed off on your Mum too!
Post a Comment