"The Ash Tree Now Comes In!"
 | | "Nothing special to declare," David Hockney painting of Woldgate Woods |
The practice of finding and making beauty in wounded places, far from being a depressing activity, as some people assume, is actually a way to enter into a lively ongoing partnership with
all places, spoiled as well as splendid.
The artist David Hockney exemplifies this kind of exuberant engagement with the world. When he took a journalist for a drive through his native Yorkshire to see an alleyway of trees he was painting, he tried instruct her in the proper way to look at them: "'Watch!' he called out. 'The ash tree now comes in--look at the shape of it! And now then on the right, another tree. There's a point where each one stands on its own. There. Now. It's surrounded by the sky. Now the next one, and it stands on its own. You see?'"
Hockey seemed to see the trees as beings as creative as he himself, as they collaborated with and distanced themselves from one another, the land, and sky. Discovering the resilience and beauty that a wounded place is constantly persisting in... and then giving back to that place with some beauty and attention of our own making, we, too, enter into a relationship of fascination, not only with that place but with all others we encounter.
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