We’ve just returned from a boy- and dog-sitting visit to Sheffield, where one of our sone lives. They have had some building work done recently, which has enabled a certain amount of rearrangement of furniture. I was startled, walking into what I suppose one might call the lounge, to see that his pictures have been reorganised. A pastel drawing of mine is hung now between prints by David Hockney and William Heaton Cooper. I was not sure whether to be flattered or dismayed.
It isn’t a bad little piece, depicting climbers on The Dovestone.* The rock is depicted rather well, conveying a sense of solidity and weight, and the composition is fine, although the two human figures are a little awkward. The experience did make me think. Although an absolutely superb technician, I cannot recall a single picture by Heaton Cooper containing a human figure. The Hockney study was one of his watercolours of the countryside of North Yorkshire. To the best of my knowledge (and a very good selection of these is on display in the Hockney Gallery in Saltaire) he too seems to fight shy of any examination of the relationship between human beings and their landscape context. It remains an object of contemplation.
I might be embarrassed by the suggestion that my work belongs on the same wall as theirs, but I did attempt to tackle a subject they both avoided. We don’t just look at landscape: we inhabit it and relate to it in active ways. I am still working on the figure-drawing.
*This lies just off the road between Pateley Bridge and Harrogate.