
Homage to Hockney
In 2012 I went to see the Royal Academy Exhibition called ‘A Bigger Picture’ by David Hockney. It had an accompanying DVD. It made a deep impression on me and I wrote this. I felt part of a wonderful and challenging BiggerPicture!
A Bigger Picture
I view Hockney’s Bigger Picture,
tracks winding into infinity,
seasons of arboreal tunnels
their ending coming closer.
The irascible smoker’s
vision of immortality;
‘if this life is a mystery
why not the next one,
even greater’, he quips.
I too declare my faith in beauty
with a Yorkshire accent,
and can spend whole mornings
gazing down a puddled lane.
His interviewer asked
tell me what you see,
‘I can’t, I’ll paint it’ he brushes,
canvass wolds, sun-drenched,
roads—light stippled and blossoming.
I suddenly trace the bigger picture
with my pen following his brush,
it reads in bold colour ‘be here,
not in some fearful exit you can’t predict.’
Here is the revelation of what life
feels like in a luminous lane,
or the bare copse of a Woldgate winter,
here celebrates the path’s infinity
even though we take our leave of it.
This then is the bigger picture; we are part,
not of a blinkered dismal smallness,
but the Hockney bold, both barrels blazing,
life affirming glory of enormous trees.
Written after seeing David Hockney’s Exhibition
and accompanying DVD both called the Bigger Picture
The Royal Academy
2012.
Copyright Adrian GR Scott from ‘Arriving in Magic’