I have just finished watching the excellent documentary on the life and work of David Hockney, one of England’s greatest living artists. Two quotes taken from this documentary made me laugh out loud and seem to sum up everything I love about Hockney the man. The first showed his Romantic individualism: “If the country collapsed tomorrow but in the same week you met the love of your life, well, you wouldn’t care less, would you”. The second found Hockney staring up at a billboard in America which warned against the dangers of smoking, of thousands of deaths. He promptly suggested renting another billboard on the opposite side of the street that would read ‘Dear Non Smokers, death awaits you whether you smoke or not!’ A staunch defender of individual liberties, I so admire someone willing to stand up against our overly cautious, safety first culture that strips away all risk in favour of adhering to the rules.
Hockney the artist takes a similar stance in his painting. He notes that nature itself pays no attention to the rules – something we would all notice for ourselves if we had the patience to really look at a single tree.
I first fell in love with Hockney’s portraits. He is particularly skilful at depicting couples, their whole relationship seemingly manifest in the space between them.
But I have recently discovered his wonderfully exuberant depictions of the English countryside…
If most people still associate Hockney with his early career in America, a lazy LA of palm trees and swimming pools, in his more recent work, late Hockney has infused the wet, drab landscapes of his native North of England with the same sense of shimmering possibility.
If ‘lockdown’ has taken our most basic liberties from us – nature has become the last truly free space. Go out into it, these paintings seem to say and really look. Now embracing the iPad as well as the easel, he is producing some of his most remarkable images of nature. Infused with an almost irrepressible joy, each Spring bud seems loaded with promise.
At 83, Hockney remains as young and fresh as the Spring itself. Looking at his work I am reminded of the first and last lines of a poem ‘The Trees’ by another Northerner Philip Larkin:
‘The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
[…]
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.’
