Howard Hodgkin

Hodgkin was a superb colorist. As abstract as the paintings may initially appear to be, Hodgkin described himself as a ‘representational artist of emotional situations’. His paintings - ‘the equivalents of memories’ he called them - are, in terms of form and color, ‘translations’ of experiences that were not necessarily of a visual nature. As spontaneous as they may appear, in reality they have been hard won, layer by layer, in a lengthy process of development. Hodgkin’s titles allude to the nature of the memories underlying the paintings. In his last years these frequently related to phenomena and sensations in nature: the tingling freshness of a spring shower, the movement of a single leaf or, as in Yellow Sky, the heaviness of a cloudy sky.