Indian View G

In Indian View G, Hodgkin once again resorts to a dark frame for his image. Here, the small view piercing through the browns and blacks suggests an idyllic image of the countryside blessed by a clear blue sky, or alternatively of a green seaside view.

While the brash brushstrokes of green may suggest that the printing plates were painted in a rush, Hodgkin dedicated long amounts of time to decide what colours he was going to use and how colours should be arranged. In many interviews, the artist repeated that his abstract paintings could take months, sometimes even years, to be finished, because he wanted the colour patterns to capture exactly the feelings he associated with a certain memory. As John McEwan explained in his monography on the artist, “the idea is to put as much as possible, of colour, of feeling, in each picture.” Here, the bright blues and greens work against the brown and black of the frames and evoke instead the peaceful harmony of a day spent surrounded by nature.