I rang the bell!

The artist Martin Creed put together the suggestion that at 08.12 we the people of Britain ring a bell for 3 minutes to celebrate the opening of the Olympic Games 12 hours later...that being 20.12. Well, I rang the back door bell and listened for others ...but no other sounds came back at me. Not even the local church with it's peal of bells that ring out every Sunday morning calling the faithful in.
This is the artist who won the Turner prize with the room that turned the lights on and off. Now actually there's a lot more to Martin Creed than this and I always think that the media response to so many of the people who win the Turner only gives a glimpse of what they are about. I googled him a while ago and was thrilled to see the paper work that he produces...so the lights, the scrap of masking tape on the wall etc. are only a tiny bit of his work and thoughts. I believe that he ahas already had a success with the bells in Italy...perhaps they are more used to bells than us or is it our reticence in not appearing rather loud?!

Inspired by Hockney.

I'm putting up some more pics today from Ashridge Woods in Hertfordshire.

 I went there with my daughter on Thursday to have a walk through the trees,  then  lunch  by a warming fire in a local pub.

The exhibition at the Royal Academy, of Hockney's take on the Yorkshire countryside, opens your eyes to the beauty of  "very littleness"...if there is such an expression!

It's in this way that I feel so much of our landscape is viewed......

...in the soft neutral colours and tones of the palettes as used  by our wonderful British watercolourists...
... such as Constable and Ruskin.
I love going to the Abbott Hall Galleries in Kendal just to gaze in awe at the watercolour room tucked away at the back of the building.

But if I'm honest to my own colour leanings.....I crave colour and expressionistic saturation!
I'm a lover of van Gogh and Matisse and also the northern group of expressionists,  the Blaue Reiter...with Nolde and Kandinsky etc.
In many ways I think this is what Hockney has brought into the art of English landscape, from his living and painting in California .
So the photo above had some colour washed out on the saturation app. on Picnic...and the one underneath, had the colours saturated in the opposite direction.

(The photographer in the pic. by the way... is she of Neviepie Cakes fame!)

I'm sure people have their own opinions about whether or not an artist should take colour "liberties" when painting the landscape.

Maybe you might like to post a comment on your preference.

I'm just posting up some of the other creatures who really don't mind either way!!

 

Just as long as he can rediscover the secret hiding places of the autumn nuts hidden for a hungry day!