From plaster to canvas

I have always known that I would never be able to afford a Picasso or a Constable. Consequently I have never been a connoisseur of art. We do have pictures and paintings in the cottage but nothing of any value. Most of our pictures were bought when we saw something that took our fancy or liked the look of. That has seemed to me to be the best way to buy pictures, as going out specifically to buy one does not seem to work. In the same way that I rarely seem to be able to go out and buy a particular item of clothing. Now we have acquired some of my mother's pictures which is rather nice and we will find a home for them in the cottage once they have been reframed.

So, I have been rather surprised to find myself drawn to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.

The exhibition is a sell out and is so popular that they are having to consider extending the opening hours. The fact that most of this exhibition is of paintings of my native Yorkshire probably has something to do with my interest. I realise that most of his paintings are gaudy and very simple and look as if they could have been painted by a child, but Yorkshire is in essence a simple, no frills county. Parts of it are stunning. The fishing village of Whitby is as picturesque as any of the pretty Cornish fishing villages. The Yorkshire Moors admittedly can be bleak and wind swept, but when the heather is out are a match for the likes of Exmoor. The majority of paintings on show are landscapes of the area known as The Wolds which is an area of small hills in North and East Yorkshire.

However, there are also some paintings from his time spent in America when he was better known for his paintings of Californian swimmings pools than English landscapes. Some of his paintings were originally iPad sketches which he has transferred to canvas. One of his old lecturers from his days as a student in his home town of Bradford has described his work as  that of a decorator. I only wish that I could decorate half as well as him.

If you are interested there is a programme about the exhibition on Sky Arts 2 on Thursday February 9 at 6pm, but if like me you do not have that channel, amongst the 101 channels that you do have, this clip may be of interest to you.

We have at last finished decorating our kitchen. It seems to have taken us about three weeks whereas the first time that we decorated it, we seemed to get it done in about three days. When you decorate some rooms you can shut the door on them at the end of the day and forget about them, but you can not do that with a kitchen. It became a drag having to be constantly removing the clutter from the kitchen so that we could get on with the painting. So I decided that I would concentrate on the decorating and then the much needed cleaning. I have now cleaned everything that can be seen which just leaves the inside of the cupboards and the ovens - grhh!