Daisy on Rollerskates

Towards the end of 1979, Peter Blake received an invitation from Peter Gould of the L.A. Louver Gallery in Los Angeles, to attend the opening of a new exhibition This Knot of Life, in which Blake and several of his contemporaries were represented. Not only did this invitation afford Blake a diversion from his recent separation from his wife Jann Haworth, but it also triggered a new direction in his work. He travelled to California with his friend Howard Hodgkin, staying at David Hockney’s home in Los Angeles, and ‘when not sunbathing or sketching by the pool, spent his time as a ‘voyeur of enormous goings-on’, attending numerous parties, dinners and openings’ (M. Livingstone, exhibition catalogue, Peter Blake: A Retrospective, Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, 2007, p. 145).

Visits to Venice Beach and its surrounding areas became a stage for his memories and ideas, and inspired a new series of paintings. Daisy on Rollerskates relates to two major works which Blake painted at this time, ‘The Meeting’ or ‘Have a Nice Day Mr Hockney’, 1981-83 (Tate, London) and A Remembered Moment in Venice, California, 1981-91 (private collection). The latter is based on a memory Blake had of walking in the evening with Hodgkin after a day at the beach. ‘With the day-trippers gone and the evening crowds yet to arrive, few people were about as a girl on roller-skates passed them by. Blake had been struck by the quality of light and colours of California, and the painting, completed with his typical realist mastery, is unusually atmospheric for him, demonstrating a shift in palette’ (M. Livingstone, exhibition catalogue, Peter Blake: A Retrospective, Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, 2007, p. 145). When working on A Remembered Moment in Venice, California and unable to photograph the transient movement of the girl, Blake worked from photographs of his daughter Daisy on rollerskates. The present work came about in this way, and the ethereal and transient quality of the larger painting can also be sensed in this work.