Hockney, Lincolnshireness and the Psalms.

There are two sorts of woman, those who wash foil and those who don't. That was just a thought that came to me this evening while I was washing up. I'm the sort that washes it in the hope of getting a second and even a third use out of it rather than throwing it away.

Early stages

Hockney cloth complete

This is of no relevance to anything, and Viv is quite weary these days, what with all the effort of lying in bed in a morning and waiting for inspiration to strike. I know, Hockney says 'Inspiration: she does not visit the lazy'. He's a morning person, and I'm sure he'd understand that there are certain states of mind that have to be treated with respect, and that's what I'm doing at such times, and it works for me. I'm not lacking in inspiration just now; it's the putting it down on cloth that really wears me out, and the other day I was busy making clothes for hills - crocheting some pink - (see Psalm 65:12) while watching Andrew Marr talk to David Hockney about his current exhibition The Bigger Picture at the RA. http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/hockney/ which if you don't already know about, you probably live down a hole and will not be reading this. So I was busy making joy-clothes for hills, when it happened that under the influence of Hockney, the pink clothes turned into the furrows of the hills themselves. This influenced the way the whole thing developed, and I ended up with a multi-coloured piece, and the feeling that Psalm 65 must be Hockney's psalm, so exuberant it is.

I know, what is this 'Hockney cloth' for anyway? It's for my secret project which will be revealed to the world in November, and for which I'm beavering away almost every day.

The abhorred vacuum

But I was seriously knocked off balance earlier that day when I'd leapt out of my mid-morning bath with a sudden Lenten wish to vacuum the whole of the upstairs, and the stairs, etc etc. By the time I'd done this, emptied the thing twice, all shred of creativity had fled, which just goes to show the wisdom of the approach I outline above. The only thing that sustained me was noticing the different colours of the layers of dirt that filled the thankfully see-through vacuum cleaner; a very Hockney thing to do, mmm? The fine silty stuff is from the stairs, second pass with the hand tools.

Anatomically correct, at least.

 Anyway, it struck me what a wonderful thing Hockney has done in putting E Yorks on the map; maybe not totally wonderful, as some of the resulting tourists are inexplicably leaving a nasty mess of rubbish behind in their quest to go see the source of beauty. Odd. But I thought, 'Could I do something for Lincolnshire?' Maybe it has already been done; there are some fine artists around here. So when we went for the once-a-week dose of pure hedonism of walking 12 miles across flat windy featureless terrain on a grey day, I took a few pics in celebration of some of the things that make this place so desirable. So brace yourself for a fest of Lincolnshireness. It wouldn't be normal for me not to end by including something of the muddy bank along which we live too.