Our very special report on the life and times of Peter Hill has only just been posted and already we’ve had complaints. It wasn’t so much what we had said, it was what we didn’t say (see Litmus Paper Glowing Red below). One of our most loyal readers JV Adams commented thus:
“How could a discussion of Peter’s handiwork not include a high-five to the time he used an involved eggs-n’-bacon metaphor to explain the complexities of composition?”
Because there was so much we had to say but only so much space (and time) to dedicate to the talent of Mr. Hill we just left it out. But JV’s comments made us go back and have a look and, yes, we made an egregious error of omission and so we present for your reading pleasure the following excerpt from Better By Design, Spectrum, August 7:
“What is composition? If you are the sort of person who dishes out your bacon and eggs and fried bread with mushrooms every morning into a pleasing arrangement on the plate, you are probably a natural born designer; and the basis of all good design – whether in paintings, CD covers, repeat patterns in textiles or billboard advertising – is composition. The hand-maiden to composition is “framing” and just as your plate frames your breakfast every morning, so artists have used a variety of devices to separate their experiments in paint from the surrounding world…”
It’s so great to know that Peter Hill is Scottish – that whole fried bread thing would sound fabulous coming out of the mouth of someone who sounded like Begbie from Trainspotting:
“If ye ur tha sort ay bodie fa dishes it yer bacon an’ eggs an’ fried breed wi’ mushrooms every morn intae a pleasin’ arrangement oan tha plate, ye ur probably a natural born designer…”
