Pitt Rivers Pots

Here are just some of my drawings of the huge pottery collection kept in the curious cases of the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, an anthropology and archaeology wonder.

Pot studies ongoing! Here's a nice old photo of the museum, it looks quite unchanged

Also feeling inspired by Rob Mason's delightful dartmoor studio shed (give his interesting blog a visit).

Maybe not for now in London, but one day...........

a concise review of hockney

David Hockney's A Bigger Picture opened last Friday at the RA, and I thought i'd write a few words because I loved it. One of the best and most refreshing things about it I thought was that it made no attempts to be anything other than just really great art. Other great things included -

- the TREES !

- the Englishness of it; the wheat ears, the cow parsley, the leaves, the grass stalks, the puddles and their reflections

- his colour work, especially his breakdown of greys into reds, purples, greens and blues. Also the pairing of really vivid greens with red, especially great on a damp London afternoon in January

- the uncompleted watercolours and the consequent negative space (and the rain spattered paint)

- the effect of the landscapes 'gridded' together in some instances

- his mark making, especially in the charcoal drawings

- the grey blue washes of the sketchbook work

- the abundance and apparentness of Hockney's pure joy in making the work

I really admired his adaption to modern technology and media, and using the iPad as an alternative sketchbook, without disregarding the traditional.

I also couldn't walk away without this very excellent mug.

I wanted to include an image of Arranged Felled Trees 2008 here, which was one of my favourite paintings, but couldn't find one. Anyway.........go and see it if you can.

EDIT
found an image for Arranged Felled Trees 2008

this year

I'll be mainly working on two big projects this year, which I'm sure you'll get to hear about as time goes on........There's also the exciting possibility of doing some more adventuring early summer, and I'll be sure to start bulking my shop out more and more now.

The end of next week I have tickets to see Hockney's new stuff at the RA. Here's the amazingly huge piece he did for the Summer Show in 2007.