Thursday 31 May 2012

A letter to David Hockney

Dear Mr Hockney,
It was a real pleasure to see your latest work 'A Bigger Picture' at the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. The building can be intimidating for anyone, however the sheer volume and the vibrancy of your paintings leaves the environment on the back foot for a change.
Having lived in the English countryside, your work came as a bit of a surprise, since for the majority of the year the only colour you get to see is green in its infinite variety, lost in rainy dank and dark conditions and grey skies,  yet even your views of winter bring the colours to life in contrast to the reality. Perhaps for a month or two in the summer and autumn the light is enough to get close to the colours of your landscapes. That is perhaps the beauty of looking at the view through the eyes of an artist's imagination, as in this case.
 The Grand Canyon is also painted in vivid colours and once again, having seen the spectacular canyon, the vibrant paintings are a shock for the eyes. Perhaps as the sun sets over the canyon the bright reds emerge, but generally the landscape is more physical than colourful.
On another topic you should be congratulated on your work with the IPad tablet, as I am sure its not easy to control the composition in colour as well as you have achieved. Apple should be paying you for the service you have provided in displaying the virtues of using their hardware and the associated painting application.
Also impressive is the sheer volume of your work on display, considering that each of the larger works are madeup of a matrix of normal canvasses, there must be several hundred elements in the exhibition. I wonder what the whole exhibition is insured for; a wild guess would be in excess of a billion pounds..
No matter what anyone says, it has been a real pleasure seeing the exhibition, and we look forward to what you might delight us with in future..
Yours sincerely


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