“Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.”
– David Hockney
This week we were inspired by the British artist, David Hockney. We tried our best to bring some warm weather and visions of beach days into our classrooms…
David Hockney was born in Bradford, England in 1937. When he was young he loved books and was interested in art from an early age. His parents encouraged his interest in art and gave him time to doodle and explore his interests.
Hockney attended the Bradford College of Art and went on to further studies at the Royal College of Art in London, England. He was a very successful student and won awards and had some of his paintings purchased by collectors.
Crediting his father for influencing his love of movies and Hollywood he moved to California in 1966. Swimming pools became his obsession and he has a whole body of work exploring that theme.
He stumbled upon his collage style with photographs after take a series of photographs for a painting and having taped them together liked the collage effect. By the mid 1970’s he was almost exclusively expressing himself through photography.
By the late 1980’s he returned to painting and his subjects included landscapes, seascapes and portraits.
Hockney has always been a fan of technology and art. He has been an early adopter of using technology as another way to express his artistic ideas. Since 2009 he has created 1000’s of paintings in his ipad and had an exhibit of his ipad paintings at the ROM in 2011.
Commissioned by The Other Art Fair, a November 2011 poll of 1,000 British painters and sculptors declared him Britain’s most influential artist of all time. He has authored countless books, is a founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, In 2012, Hockney transferred paintings valued at $124.2 million to the David Hockney Foundation. The artist plans to give away the paintings, through the foundation.
David Hockney continues to produce a prolific volume of work.