SPACE IN TEXT

.

.,

In the link under the image above, David Hockney talks about the light and colour of his native East Yorkshire (link supplied courtesy of Jock- thank you, again). As he points out, there are  big skies. He talks at length about seeing the colour. What he doesn’t point out is that there is something quite odd going on with these colours and the light here. Viewers may think his paintings garish and his colours apparently not very subtle (to put it gently). Seeing colour in nature is one thing, but surely the colour is not like this, not even when represented as the artist’s point of view? 

.

,

Hockney is onto something here. The light and the colour are different, as they are in certain places, for a reason. The light is so because the ground is (invariably where Hockney is painting) elevated – there is more than 180 degrees of sky – the trees are on the edge of a ridge above the Vale of York. The ground drops away to reveal a blue and violet patchwork of fields stretching down to the sea, perhaps 30 miles away or more. The word ‘wolds’ means ‘upland cleared of trees’ (I think in Old Norse, a carry over from the blanket Viking settlement of the area) and so it is with the places in these images- few trees come in to crowd out the light. In fact there is very little crowding here- this is one of the least populated parts of the British Isles. You can find lost villages here and be completely alone with the wind. Except of course, that there are always men in caps in the countryside, somewhere, and this place is no exception.

,

.

.

The bright, almost primary, colouring might be a function of the light and the big skies, or the choice of crops, the big fields revealing their contents easily, or perhaps these colours are everywhere in the British Isles and I just think this place is special because it is my place. I don’t always like Hockney’s paintings of EY for the over-colouring, but this brightness IS there in the landscape, to a certain extent, as the photographs show. I spent an idyllic childhood here on a farm. We were invariably sent out into in the woods and fields to play, as children had been for generations. The landscape now is it was then and was a hundred years ago, too.

,

.

We always used to think there were secrets hidden in the valleys and would set out on our bikes to find them. We never found much, just the odd clay pipe, horseshoe and codswallop bottle. There are genuinely lost villages, both documented, such as the one at Wharram Percy, and not. WP can be visited if you have enough patience for the walk- it’s a couple of miles through the fields and hedge-bottoms. Nobody goes there- the locals are farmers and they have enough of this in their backyards. In the summer there is the skylark and the scent of ripe barley, in the winter there is the scent of mud from the ploughed fields and the shriek of the wind. The landscape becomes drained of colour, and as the hedges and verges are cut down for the winter, more exposed. It is a bleak place, possibly at all times of the year, and it is wrong to romanticise it.

.

From the sound the trees made together in the wind, a creaking and moaning, we would become convinced that the woods were alive (we were all under the age of 10) and would be spooked. It is unknown to us why the trees are planted like this. Sometimes it is to mark a field boundary, sometimes we believe it is was to mark a burial mound, or shelter crops (the most usual explanation). Sometimes it was the whimsy of the farmer, especially if he planted willow- the wood grows into mature trees when planted in the ground- as happened to my grandfather’s fence-posts a couple of miles from there where the above photograph was taken. We also had roses in our woods, and fuchsia. Perhaps this was my father’s way of trying to tame nature, but whatever it was, it was quite unusual.

,

.

One day my father and some men were clearing some of the woods, thinning out the trees. They built a Canadian style  log cabin there, for my brother and I, perhaps eight foot by eight with the felled timber. The roof was covered with turf. When I was turned out of the house ‘to play outside’ over about seven or eight years from the late ’70s into the 1980s, I’d come here to read comics and draw. Invariably it would be 2000AD (frequently), with Judge Dredd (Carlos Ezquerra) as well as whatever else was available- Valiant, Victor, Shoot and so on. There were also about a dozen Marvel comics, The Avengers, mostly, just enough to really confuse me. Biology was everywhere- Alien came out in 1979 and we gawped at the depiction of Nature that showed. What was most shocking was coming to the understanding that (having seen H R Gigers drawings on a Nationwide programme) that nobody actually was able to put limits on what biology (or indeed drawing, or stories) should be. Strange then, strange now. What, if any, were the rules?

So what happened? Our gang gradually disbanded as we got older and one day there was not enough of us to tend the hollihocks and clear the brambles and nettles. So I left all the comics just where they were and never went back, leaving the cabin under the thorns. As far as I know, everything is still there in the woods, perhaps a couple of miles from where these photographs are taken.

.

.

On the day of my 40th birthday, for these images to fish up, when I was a long way from home, the timing was uncanny. East Yorkshire is not the most exciting place in the world, and there is art I like more, but there is little art that could be more personal than this.
.