David Hockney Exhibition

I was so excited to see the David Hockney exhibition at the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria). We had studied him with the Waverley Art Quilters in 2014 and I was really drawn to his latest landscape work.

The exhibition is called Current and it includes all his latest work including his huge landscape called Bigger Trees Near Warter which took up the whole wall of one of the rooms in the gallery. The original painting was done on many different canvasses and then hung together. These paintings were then printed and framed and put on the other three walls so once you entered the room you were surrounded by the landscape.

Bigger trees near Warter 2007 David Hockney

You can get an idea of the huge scale by looking at the person standing in the bottom left of the picture.

Of course I had to have a photo of myself in front of it just to prove that I was actually seeing it.

David Hockey is in his 80's but that doesn't mean he has slowed down; he loves the current technology and bought the Brushes app for his Ipad and Iphone as soon as it came out.

The paintings that he has produced on these devices have been printed out on a large scale and were displayed. I particularly loved the spring paintings.

The arrival of Spring in Wolgate 2011 David Hockey

Can you believe that he has done that painting on an Ipad?

There were screens set up around the exhibition that looked like a huge Ipad and you could see a video of him doing the painting from scratch. What really amazed me was how many layers he used. Just when I thought a section was complete he would go over it some more.

We could have been there for hours; there was so much to see. There was a huge gallery of portraits that he painted of his friends and acquaintances over two years and other paintings playing with perspective but I preferred his landscapes.

I bought the book that seems to contain all the images from the show as well as some of his older work and a big interview with him about his life and his thoughts on painting.

The images in the book are large so you can get an idea of the marks that he makes when producing his paintings.

We are so lucky to live in Melbourne and have the gallery bring these wonderful exhibitions to us. Earlier in the year we had the Degas paintings and last year we had Monet, every year we are presented with these wonderful displays.

The David Hockney exhibition is on until the 13th March 2017, so there is plenty of time to see it. I am going to try and see it again before it closes. I am such a fan and have recorded two documenteries about him over the last couple of years and I have lost count of the number of times that I have watched them. One of the films follows him around over 12 months while he is painting the huge landscape which was one of the reasons that I was so thrilled to see it in this exhibition.

You can see the post I did on David Hockney in 2014 by clicking here.

Bye for now,
Linda