An Inspiration

There's thousands of artists and photographers out there. Just imagine how many pieces of art that would be. A lot, right? Millions upon millions of works of art that everyone can see. Within those millions of works, there are many pieces that can give a viewer or fellow artist some kind of inspiration.

Everyone has favorites, favorite food, favorite place, favorite color, favorite song. Well, one of my favorite artists is David Hockney. He contributes to multiple artistic medias including photography, painting, drawing, graphics, and many others. He has such an interesting, unique, and different style and technique. I learned about him my junior year in high school in my photography class. We had to create a collage, but specifically mimicking a technique Hockney uses. It’s one of my favorite ways to create a collage because of its originality and creativity. In some of his collage pieces, he shows the passage of time by photographing the scene and also any changes or movement of the subject. When he puts the collage together, he places the multiple photos of one subject and it’s changes together.

Here is an example of one of his collages that portrays this method. It is called Scrabble, Hollywood. It shows a group of people playing Scrabble, but it also shows their different faces throughout the game expressing diverse emotions. It shows time passing. I find that really interesting, creating a way to show time passing through a photograph.

He uses another technique that gives a picture an interesting twist that grabs a viewer's attention. He'll create a collage, but when he puts the photos together, he doesn't align them perfectly; he places them slightly off which gives the image a peculiar look. He also uses different views of items in the picture so the end result is a little distorted. His collection of these collages are called composite polaroids and my favorite one is called Still Life Blue Guitar. I love looking at the different details and objects he includes and the different angles and views.

I really enjoy looking at his art and I love how original his work is. He's truly an inspiration to me and his techniques are something I would really like to try using in some of my photography.

If you want to see some of his work, here is his official site with a number of his pieces.