When the weather’s good there really is no better place to holiday than Britain. We have the most beautiful beaches and the best seaside fish & chips! Why struggle through airports, putting on your face masks and stressing with all the restrictions, when often the best holidays and inspiration for art can be found so much nearer.
Many artists have taken inspiration from our beautiful landscapes, the changing colours and light, shadows, sea, rivers and hills, we can find beauty wherever we look, if we choose to, the choice is really completely up to us. How wonderful then to appreciate nature and the healing power it can have on all of us, especially now, during and after times of such stress and uncertainty.
Obviously this is also the feeling Edward Enninful, British Vogue editor had when commissioning 14 covers of artists UK landscapes for the August issue of Vogue 2020. The original prints of all these covers, by some of our best artists, from Tim Walker to David Hockney are to be later auctioned in aid of Covid-19 charities. Hockney’s contribution of his Yorkshire wheat fields, highlight this sense of ‘shouting out’ colour , with the vivid dramatic party of orange wheat and green fields. The beauty and simplicity of Hockney’s simple yet eye catching wheat field landscape inspires us to go out into nature, to look and to actually see, to translate not just a colour but a whole atmosphere and mood for the viewer.
Another artist whose work also embraces the simplicity of nature and the beauty of colour is artist Brian Parker. His Thorpe Bay ‘Beach Huts’ clearly shows Parker’s interest in perspective, colour and pattern, simple pleasures!
The beach huts may well be something that many people would take a selfie in front and appreciate the aesthetics but maybe not so much with a scene like the old and decrepit shelter in Leigh-on-Sea. The shelter, although disintegrating, hit Parker as a fantastic composition, a clear example of ‘beauty to be found in everything’.
So do open your eyes, see the colours, appreciate the scenes around and near you, take photos, paint, write about whatever you like just love it – this could be the year you need that inspiration and love more than ever!
