A Life in Colour
Born on July 9, 1937, in Bradford, a large industrial city in northern England, Hockney decided at age 11 that he wanted to be an artist. He studied at the Royal College of Art in London, where he clashed with authorities who nearly denied him his diploma — only to relent and award him the prestigious gold medal for painting. irishexaminer.com
His move to Los Angeles in 1964 proved transformative. Enthralled by the brilliant sunlight and freedoms of California, he produced works such as A Bigger Splash that seemed to encapsulate the allure of what he called the “promised land.” “The moment I got to America I thought ‘This is the place,'” he once recalled. wftv.com irishexaminer.com
An openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in England, Hockney embraced the opportunity to explore his sexuality through his art, producing paintings he later described as “homosexual propaganda.” irishexaminer.com
Restless Innovation
Across a seven-decade career, Hockney proved restlessly inventive. He experimented with photo-collage techniques in the 1980s, created hundreds of pictures on his iPad in the 2000s, and turned to landscape painting in his native Yorkshire, where a 2012 Royal Academy exhibition attracted 600,000 visitors. In 2018, his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction for $90 million, then a record for a living artist. irishexaminer.com
Historian Simon Schama wrote that “his work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure.” wftv.com
In his final years, Hockney retreated to an isolated farmhouse in Normandy, where he continued painting four to six hours a day despite requiring round-the-clock nursing care. An exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery in London, which opened in March, had been showcasing his work at the time of his death. serpentinegalleries.org irishexaminer.com
“I’m happiest when I’m painting,” he once said. “If I can paint every day I don’t care about anything else.” irishexaminer.com
