Art heros - Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin says of his work: "I am a representational painter but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations."

There's an article about him in today's Guardian. Read it here. Recovering from illness, he has done two 20-foot paintings. See more of his work here.

Hodgkin has the reputation of being a difficult interviewee. He says he can't, out of respect for his own work, talk about it. When asked what a painting is about, he might reply: “Look! Just look!”

He also said, "I don't think English people like painting much. It's all right if you're an amateur, but the profession of painting makes people very uneasy." (Could that be because "the profession of painting" is a hard thing to understand?)

After seeing the Hodgkin show at the Tate in 2006 - pictures with lots of space around them, on brightly-painted walls of various colours - I started this piece based on this one (using colours I had to hand) -It was emotional to see those paintings; this is my response to that situation.