Postcards

The strangest country I ever visited was England…

Portsmouth, Hampshire

…but I visited it at a very early age…

Royal Pavillion, Brighton, Sussex

… and so became a little queer myself.

Colchester, Essex

England is extremely subtle; and about the best of it there is something almost secretive…

The New Art Gallery Walsall, Gallery Square, Walsall, Staffordshire, WS2

… it is an amateur even more than aristocratic in tradition…

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, York, Yorkshire, YO1

… it is never official.

Folkestone, Kent

From GK Chesterton’s Autobiography (1936)

Bigger Trees Near Warter

The painting itself was essentially completed in one breathless, three-week sprint that left Hockney’s assistant, Jean-Pierre, looking exhausted and the painter himself exhilarated. Both had grown beards; as a result Hockney slightly resembled Cézanne.

David Hockney's Bigger Trees Near Warter, York Art Gallery, Exhibition Square, York, Yorkshire, Y01

“The painting had to be done in one go. Once I started, I had to carry on until it was finished,” says Hockney.

York Art Gallery, Exhibition Square, York, Yorkshire, Y01

“The deadline wasn’t the Royal Academy. The deadline was the arrival of spring, which changes things. The motif is one thing in winter, but in summer it’s one solid mass of foliage – so you can’t see inside and it’s not as interesting to me.”

York Museum Gardens, York, Yorkshire, Y01

From Martin Gayford’s The Bigger Picture, The Telegraph (May 2007)

York Cat Trail

As if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see…

York Cat Trail, York, YO1

…yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs…

York Cat Trail, York, YO1

…suspended, like a
prehistoric fly.

From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Black Cat