Back to photostream

Hawthorne blossom at Rudston David Hockney 2008

Following my last post a photograph of Hawthorns, a take on the same subject from David Hockney. Of course there is no comparison anybody could have taken the photograph, Hockney’s painting is masterly and imaginative. He took great pains in capturing the glory of hawthorn blossom Hockney described ‘as if thick white cream had been poured over everything’. He recognises the fleeting nature of spring better than any other contemporary artist

 

There is a nice story that when Hockney was based in Los Angeles he would ring family and friends daily to check on the state of the Hawthorne trees. When the blossom began he got on the first flight to the UK so he could paint it .

 

Eventually he made a permanent move from LA to Bridlington in East Yorkshire, it would be hard to find two more different places . For ten years from 2004 Hockney observed the landscape and changing seasons of the Yorkshire wolds around Bridlington. The countryside here is by no means spectacular but he has taken a landscape familiar to most people in Britain, rolling hills, fields, hedgerows and woodland and celebrated it’s beauty. I loved how he has used a seemingly ordinary landscape. Not all of us have spectacular mountains deserts or beaches on our doorstep but we all have somewhere, a lane or park or some fields like those in Hockney’s paintings close by where we can see buds fatten, open and unfurl and blossoms bloom and fade.

 

The photograph was taken on an iphone 16 at the major exhibition in Paris at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. If you look closely this work is made of two separate canvases

 

 

Check out the BBC interview with Hockney at the opening of the exhibition

 

youtu.be/3_iVUwhzwG8?si=DTWMKHW2xfGLMiSX

 

 

THANKS FOR YOUR VISIT TO MY STREAM.

 

I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD NOT FAVE A PHOTO

WITHOUT ALSO LEAVING A COMMENT

 

 

914 views
34 faves
63 comments
Uploaded on May 26, 2025
Taken on May 19, 2025