David Hockney, Yorkshire Landscapes, 1997-current

David Hockney, The Road Across the Wolds, 1997

David Hockney RA, Wheat Field near Fridaythorpe, August 2005

David Hockney is a painter, photographer, printmaker, and stage designer. He is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. Hockney spent most of his working life in California, but is now back home working on landscapes in Yorkshire.

In the summer of 1997, Hockney traveled to Yorkshire to see a friend who was dying. The travels inspired multiple landscapes of the countryside. The oil paintings were done in rich, bold colors. The landscapes were abstract, giving a quilt-like pattern to the farmland.  The artists creates the paintings en plein air. He prefers the what the eyes sees to the camera’s version of it. Every season the artist will paint the landscape and see how it changes. Hockney claims that, “Landscapes and portraits: what else is there?” He also claims that, “Trees in the winter are all individual, just as no face is like another.” 

I think what draws me to landscapes and Hockney are the same thing; individuality. With landscapes I can show how I see the landscape. Hockney sees his home of Yorkshire like no one else and portrays it as so.