I went to visit the David Hockney exhibition at the Light Box gallery in Woking, Surrey today. He’s not an artist who’s work I knew of, although I’m sure I’ve heard the name before.

I was impressed by how varied his work was. He had oil pairings, inkjet painting that he’s done when inkjet was first released. He had ink line drawing work and he had even experimented with pressed pulp drawings where he made his own papers, incorporating the image he wanted to make into the process, so that the pressed paper itself was the piece of art.

They exhibited a letter he had written to a friend, where he sounded extremely happy and excited about his work and what he had been learning during his experimentation. This was a nice glimpse into his thoughts about how he felt about his work. I really liked his experimental style. But the one thing I told away from the visit was that although some of his works were perfected to a high level, most were not. Most of them had brush marks, you could see the pencil under-drawings, some looked half finished and if an artist today released his inkjet art I don’t think it would go down so well. But he was incentive with the new materials he had at the time, he was exploring and experimenting and was not afraid to make a ‘bad mark’. I remember seeing the same things when I went to the Comic Museum in London. The work was amazing, but they too had left brush strokes or felt marks and made errors that they the cut out new paper, placed it over the top and repairing the section and used stark white highlights that look like they had been painted in tipex.

After the visit, when I was reflecting on my own work and working practices I realised how hard I am on myself and my work. I am always striving for perfection and spend a lot of time making sure there are no brush marks and lines that aren’t in the wrong place.

I guess what I’m learning is that perfection is overrated and that I really should let go a little and experiment more. Which ties in very nicely with my next exercise which is to create a sketchbook with different materials or types of paper and using different mediums experimenting the different effects I can make. I am quite excited about this exercise as this is something I never do. Although I have been using and learning more and more mediums i.e. watercolour, gouache, pastels, I will always use the appropriate corresponding paper and I have not pushed past that and tried more unconventional materials. I am looking forward to doing more gallery visits to get inspired and see the way others worked.