Hockney exhibition, London.

On Thursday I went up to London to see the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. If you haven't seen this I would really, really recommend that you go. It is a fantastic exhibition, one of the best I have ever seen.  The scale of the paintings, and the amount of them in the exhibition makes it really worthwhile.

I have always loved landscape paintings.  Hockney has painted landscape in many ways before, but this exhibition is a really fresh approach. I am not sure if you saw the paintings individually they would impress you so much. However, the whole collection viewed together has tremendous impact.

Quite a lot of the paintings are done as a series. He has painted the same viewpoint over a year, to catch the changes in the seasons. This is not an original idea, as many artists have done this before. Although when you can view all the paintings, in the same room, at the same time, it is impressive. Hockney captures the colour and feel of the changing seasons really well. He does not use traditional colours at all, yet it really works. Pink fields and purple trees may not sound right, but they add to the atmosphere and to the unique quality of the works.

Most of the larger paintings are done over several canvases, put together. Some of these are actually huge, infact massive!  In one room, where all the paintings are of a wood, you feel you are actually in the wood, as you are surrounded by it on all sides.

In other rooms there are huge displays of smaller canvases. They all relate to each other, and enhance each other. The subject matter is always the same, country views of Yorkshire. A considerable amount of the paintings have a similar composition, that of a road or path going away in to the distance. This theme runs through the whole exhibition.

I find Hockney's style very simplistic, almost naive in places. Some of the landscapes are all about pattern. He has painted in a very straightforward and spontaneous way. Up close you can see crude dabs and dots of paint. He has used broad brushstrokes on branches, making them too thick in places, in my opinion. Despite this, I love the honesty of his work. 

Some paintings are very layered. As an artist myself, I can appreciate how long it takes to build up a painting in this way. Yet amazingly Hockney produced an incredible amount of work in a only a few years. Some of his work was done in situ and some of it from memory, and some a combination.

It would be hard to have a favourite painting from this exhibition. I could probably do a favourite top ten, but to reduce that down further would be difficult. Here are a few that I particularly liked.

The two images below were produced by Hockney using his I-Pad. He has used this as a sketchbook in recent years. The results are amazing!  I particularly liked the one on the left hand side, as I like the reflections in the puddles. It is a new medium for artists to work in. I do not have an I-Pad, but the closest I have come to this technique is drawing on Photoshop.I did not find that  particularly easy!  So, that makes Hockneys work so impressive, to me.

I could go on about this, but to really appreciate all these paintings you have to see them in the gallery.  Pictures on a screen, or in a book do not do them justice. I know it may be difficult to get tickets for this exhibition, as it has been such a success, but if you can find a way to see it, you will enjoy it and remember it for a long time.