winter timber (detail)
2009
oil on fifteen canvases, 274.3 x 609.6 cm overall
Private Collection. Image © David Hockney. All Rights Reserved.
Complete image
From: David Hockney - A Bigger Picture, UK Book.
20.01.12: painting details
David Hockney refers to the trees in the Wolds as 'friends'. Driving in Woldgate one day, he saw two dead trees, and contemplated whether to paint them thee and then, or wait until the summer. Undecided, when he next returned he found them chopped down. He sketched them on the spot and then painted them from memory in his studio.
A week later he returned to see many more felled trees, this time with logs piled along the roadside. From this Winter Timber was born and perfectly captures the life cycle of the tree. The fact that it's 9 x 20 feet overall only accentuates the cycle and, simultaneously, the picture can be intrepreted as a metaphor for our own mortality. Nature's life cycle and own are entangled on a level without words for just by standing in front of this picture you feel that mortality. You feel Life & Death.
Text: Paul Page, 2012
20.01.12: a bigger picture book & exhibition
David Hockney - A Bigger Picture, UK Book.
Accompanies the acclaimed 2012 Royal Academy Exhibition. Details: here. Details: exhibition.
Book Available: Amazon.co.uk
David Hockney Biography
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Image © David Hockney
All Rights Reserved.