David Hockney

Harper's Bazaar September 2014

When the page turned to this picture, I stopped. I've been behind in the September magreads for various and assorted reasons; and to be honest, I was flipping through pretty chore-like ... quick and done. But the beauty of this landscape, found a breath of air that I have been long looking for in the last month.

I am particularly fond of landscapes. I've written on these pages before that I am of the J.M.W. Turner variety. Dramatic. Tortured. Naturalistic. Splendor. I have heard of David Hockney certainly, though I'm not familiar with his work. It makes sense that he is English to me with the beauty of this ... and the color. And I approve with envy the description of his home and work space in Boyd's article: "Hockney is a Yorkshire man ... Bridlington, a small resort town on the North Sea, is where over the past few years he has made his home in a seaside villa- with a 10,000-square-foot former factory as a vast studio a few minutes away.' Sounds wonderful. And the scene that would make a perfect muse. The work shown above may be of this place, but as the article says, Hockney has been living and working in Los Angelos. And rather than pen and paper, or paint and canvas,  he's been using an IPad to make art. How cool is that.

As I said, I am full of envy. He says, "They don't teach drawing in art schools anymore. It's criminal. Teaching drawing teaches people to look." Well Mr. Hockney, looking is one of my favorite past-times; unfortunately, I don't have the talent to take what I see and put it to paper. A few years ago I had the inclination to take an art class ... a painting class. But the art teacher in the building where I work explained that if I was going to paint, I needed to draw first, so I enrolled in a drawing class at the Art Institute of Chicago. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but I knew with the first fuzzy pencils sketches that I did, I would never become the artist that could capture what I see to paper. In the article, Boyd quotes Ingres: "It takes 30 years to learn to draw and 3 days to learn to paint." Having that experience at the Art Institute made me fully aware of that point. I don't have 30 years of practice for that in me ... I'll just collect the images in my head and appreciate them. I'll leave ART to the artists.

Outside my door.

The above is what I see. It's magnificent. And my IPhone captured it wonderfully last evening. I would love to be able to paint a picture that looks like this with paint on paper. But I would argue that Hockney may appreciate the fact that I took the time to see it. This is my capture.