David Hockney is a very prominent artist of our time with a long history of successful and imaginative works. His work centres around his experiences and personal perspective, illustrated in a book retrospective called ‘That’s just the way I see it’, his later works centre mainly around nature and the environment he finds himself in. He is also a well known portrait artist and his paintings of people have the same natural warm sensibility as his paintings.
I have been inspired by his brave use of colour and his candid way of working, he isn’t trying to render a photo perfect image, he is just painting what he sees and trying to communicate his experience to us. This is similar to what I try to do with my work but Hockney does it fearlessly, which is something I need to learn to channel.
Although I am working in sculpture and 3D I feel his work is related to mine in the sense of colour and the perception of colour; we both use vibrancy and contrast to impact the mood of a piece and we both illustrate a perception of colour that is not as traditional as other perceptions. Cezanne and Klee are other great colour users, they also inspire me to continue to be vibrant and to experiment.
The reason I gravitated towards Hockney this term is because i have been way out of my comfort zone; living in a new house and no studio access has made it very difficult for me to stay focused or even feel calm most days. Hockney’s work (and the colours especially) make me feel joy, I can feel the warm soothing California light that influenced him so much. I also love the way he uses contrasting and complementary colours to create depth and almost movement in the paintings.
I also really admire his honest technique in painting and it is encouraging to see such a famous artist be so popular by using such a candid (and some would say child-like) way of painting. His paintings of Yorkshire are some of my favourites and they display all the best things about him from bold colour to immense scale; he sometimes paints on 6+ canvas’ to make one wall sized image.
The more important factor is that when I see his work I feel the intense drive to be a better artist that I felt when I first found it, this is a feeling that I have not had strongly this year. The fact that an 80+ year old man can still make his way out of the house to paint or draw each day is an inspiration, and the fact he can still work so well and in such a large scale is a higher standard I want to try and hold myself to.