Day 48 and I have one word for today…WHEW!  I have 6 days to finish packing until we move into the new house.  I still have so much more to pack and there’s still so much to finish remodeling and repair at the new house.  I was able to finish my painting earlier this afternoon to share with you!  I really enjoyed creating this piece.  Join me in celebrating Sir Howard Hodgkin today!

Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CH, CBE (born 6 August 1932) is a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction.

Hodgkin’s first solo show was in London in 1962. His early paintings tend to be

made up of hard-edged curved forms in a limited number of colours.

Around the beginning of the 1970s, Hodgkin’s style became more spontaneous, with vaguely recognisable shapes presented in bright colours and bold forms. His works may then be called “semi-abstract”, and are often compared to the paintings of Henri Matisse.

In 1980, Hodgkin was invited by John Hoyland to exhibit work as part of the Hayward Annual at the Hayward Gallery along with Gillian Ayres, Basil Beattie, Terry Setch, Anthony Caro, Patrick Caulfield, Ben Nicholson and others.

In 1984, Hodgkin represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, in 1985 he won the Turner

Prize, and in 1992 he was knighted.

In 1995, Hodgkin printed the Venetian Views series, which depict the same view of Venice at four different times of day. Venice, Afternoon – one of the four prints – uses sixteen sheets, or fragments, in a hugely complex printing process which creates a colourful, painterly effect. This piece was given to the Yale Centre of British Art in June 2006 by the Israel family to complement their already-impressive collection of Hodgkins.

In 2003 he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as a Companion of Honour. A major exhibition of his work was mounted at Tate Britain, London, in 2006. Also in 2006, The Independent declared him one of the 100 most influential gay people in Britain, as his work helps many people express their emotions to others.

In September, 2010 Hodgkin and five other British artists including John

Hoyland, John Walker, Ian Stephenson, Patrick Caulfield and R.B. Kitaj were included in an exhibition entitled The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, at the Yale Center for British Art.

His prints are hand-painted etchings and he has worked with the same master printer (Jack Shirreff at 107 Workshop) and print publisher (Alan Cristea Gallery) for the last 25 years.

Biography above from wikipedia.

Excerpt from an article from nytimes.com.

I wonder how Mr. Hodgkin reacts to words like “beautiful,” “voluptuary” and “immaculate.” He has bristled at being called an intimist, which years ago became his burden in the way that “colorist” became a knock on Bonnard. Mr. Hodgkin now makes some very big pictures, while he continues to make very small ones, sometimes decorative (another standard put-down), but more often tough and muscular. The ravishment of color belies the ambition; only occasionally does it undermine it. As the film critic Anthony Lane, a longtime admirer of Mr. Hodgkin’s, points out in the show’s catalog, Mr. Hodgkin has been, on the one hand, “applauded as a Chardin de nos jours and, on the other, scorned as a kind of advanced interior decorator.”

He asks, “Is Howard Hodgkin an artist of the small scale?” Then he answers his own question: No, he is “an extremist.”

That’s a surprising way to describe a careful painter, but I know what he means. Mr. Hodgkin is not a small-scale painter, even when his pictures are small; he can be uneven, but his best work is, in a sly, almost deceptive way, what serious abstraction ought to be about.

It is inspired by memories or “emotional situations,” as Mr. Hodgkin says. He rarely reveals what these are. His titles hint teasingly at them. He’s a reader, a collector, an expert on Indian miniatures, a widely curious consumer and an assimilator of art history. His paintings are full of more or less buried allusions.

~

I really wished I had a frame that fit my canvas, but my supplies are pretty limited since I’m packing and moving.  I think it would’ve been a blast to paint on the frame as Hodgkin did.  I really enjoyed his paintings and I think he has a very distinctive intensity to his work.

I hope you enjoy my tribute and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 49!  I’m sure I’ll still be a little crazy until I’m all settled into my new house.  I can’t wait!  xoxo, Linda