The Yorkshire landscape, portraits, digital drawings and looking at the bigger picture.
David Hockney painting 'Winter Timber' in Bridlington, July 2009 © David Hockney. Photo credit: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima
David Hockney was born in 1937 and is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. Painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, photographer and an important contributor to the pop art movement.
Hockney studied at the Bradford School of Art and then the Royal College of Art, London, until 1962. His early works often allude to his sexuality, then as his career progressed he went on to paint Californian pool scenes, portraits of family and friends, the Yorkshire environment, and then experimented with digital media such as photography and iphone drawing apps.
In the 60's, Hockney visited California, leading to one of his most famous works, A Bigger Splash in 1967. It hints toward human presence, captures the 60's glamour and leisure, and the bright colours encapsulate the postwar optimism in Britain. Whilst the painting is based on a photograph which depicts a transient moment, the splash was not painted with quick gestural marks but slow strokes and little lines.
"When you photograph a splash, you’re freezing a moment and it becomes something else. I realise that a splash could never be seen this way in real life, it happens too quickly. And I was amused by this, so I painted it in a very, very slow way"
This may translate into my work if I decide to paint a fleeting moment, considering what colours I would use and marks I would make.
A Bigger Splash, 1967, Tate, © David Hockney
I was drawn to Hockney's work of the Yorkshire landscapes, being a northerner from Yorkshire myself. The way he presents his work also captured my interest.
The 2012 Royal Academy's exhibition David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, for example, featured multiple canvases put together to form huge paintings of the Yorkshire landscape. This encouraged me to consider how I could present my work, whether it would be a singular image or a combination of canvases to form a larger unified picture.
David Hockney paintingWoldgate Before Kilham, a Yorkshire landscape, in 2007.
Photo: Jean-Pierre Goncalves de Lima/Film Movement.
The portraits of family and friends, and the bright colour palettes were attractive to me.
After 2012 Hockney returned to Los Angeles and created 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life. I like the bright background colours, but I like the process behind these paintings even more so. Each subject was invited to sit for three days and there were no preparatory drawings or refinement afterwards, the vibrancy achieved is owed to the spontaneity of Hockney.
Above is a composite image, 3 paintings from '82 Portraits and 1 Still-life'. Barry Humphries, Dagny Corcoran, Celia Birtwell. © David Hockney. Photo credit: Richard Schmidt.
In my own work, I want to start portraits of my family to capture their likeness and elements of daily life.
SEE SKETCHBOOK FOR MY DEVELOPMENTS FROM HERE.
(I experimented with digital drawing, watercolour landscapes, oil portraits and acrylic portraits)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
David Hockney: The Art of Seeing - A Culture Show Special, 19:00 27/02/2012, BBC2 England https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/02537180?bcast=79958287
Imagine... David Hockney - A Bigger Picture, 22:35 30/06/2009, BBC1 London
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