Day 148!  I can feel summer coming (well, actually it already feels like summer)…been taking my dogs on nice hikes.  There’s nothing better than a pooped out pup.  I’m excited to go to improv tonight…one more class and then our show on Friday.  Then it’s summer break.  I’m sure I’ll be taking a class throughout the summer to keep myself sane.  I’ve actually been interested in the playwright class.  I’d like to get into that more.  I’ve been writing so many books, I’d like to delve into writing plays.  We’ll see.  For now, join me in celebrating John Hoyland today.

John Hoyland RA (12 October 1934 – 31 July 2011) was a London-based British artist. He was one of the country’s leading abstract painters.

John Hoyland was born on 12 October 1934, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to a working-class

family, and educated at Sheffield School of Art and Crafts within the junior art department (1946-51) before progressing to Sheffield School of Art and Crafts proper (1951-56), and the Royal Academy Schools, London (1956-60) where Sir Charles Wheeler, the then President of the Royal Academy famously ordered that Hoyland’s paintings – all abstracts – be removed from the walls of the Diploma Galleries.

It was only the intervention of Peter Greenham, Acting Keeper of the Schools, that saved the day when he reminded Sir Charles Wheeler that Hoyland also painted landscapes – evidence that he could ‘paint properly’.

In 1953 Hoyland went abroad for the first time, hitch-hiking with a friend to the South of France. After the bleakness of Sheffield it was a revelation.

The 1960s were a crucial decade for Hoyland; it was in these years that he found his voice as an

artist. Hoyland’s first solo exhibition was held at the Marlborough New London Gallery in 1964 and his first solo museum show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1967, curated by Bryan Robertson.

In the 1960s, Hoyland’s work was characterised by simple shapes, high-key colour and a flat picture surface. In the 1970s his paintings became more textured. He exhibited at the Waddington Galleries, London throughout the 1970s and 1980s. During the 1960s and 1970s, he showed his paintings in New York City with the Robert Elkon Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.

His paintings are closely aligned with Post-Painterly Abstraction, Color Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction. Hoyland disliked the “abstract” painter label and described himself as “a painter”.

Retrospectives of his paintings have been held at the Serpentine Gallery (1979), the Royal Academy

(1999) and Tate St Ives (2006). He won the 1982 John Moores Painting Prize.

His works are held in many public and private collections including the Tate. In September 2010, Hoyland and five other British artists including Howard Hodgkin, 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.

He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1991 and was appointed Professor of the Royal Academy Schools in 1999. The National Portrait Gallery holds portraits of the artist in its collection.

Hoyland died 31 July 2011 aged 76, of complications following heart surgery undertaken in 2008. He was survived by his wife Beverley Heath Hoyland and his son Jeremy, from his first marriage to Airi Karakainen.

Biography is from wikipedia.

“Paintings are there to be experienced, they are events. They are also to be meditated on and to be enjoyed by the senses; to be felt through the eye.”

John Hoyland, 1979

I really had fun painting this piece today.  In order to get the splashy effect, I put a tarp down and watered down the paint and had did a Pollock-esque experience.  I then used sticks and my fingers to paint.  So no brushes today.  Just splashing, finger painting and dripping today.  It was fun and I also had to wait for layers to dry before applying more so it took longer than most paintings.  I hope you enjoy it and I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 149!  Best, Linda