1937–2026
David Hockney spent a lifetime teaching us to look.
Born in Bradford in 1937, Hockney went on to become one of the most recognisable and influential British artists of his generation. Across a career spanning seven decades, his world stretched from Yorkshire to California and Normandy, yet wherever he worked, his fascination remained remarkably consistent: light, colour, landscape, people and the experience of seeing.
Following his death at the age of 88, it is difficult to think of another artist who brought such curiosity to the act of looking.
The swimming pools of Los Angeles may have created some of Hockney’s most immediately recognisable images, but they represent only one chapter in a practice characterised by continual experimentation. Painting was joined by printmaking, photography, photocollage, stage design and, eventually, the iPhone and iPad.
Technology, for Hockney, never seemed to replace drawing. It simply offered another way to do it.
That curiosity became particularly evident in his later landscapes. Returning his attention first to Yorkshire and later to Normandy, Hockney observed the changing seasons with extraordinary intensity. Trees, blossom, rain, paths and fields became subjects through which he could explore time itself.
In The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, created on an iPad during a period when much of the world had come to a standstill, Hockney recorded the landscape around his home as winter gave way to spring. Day after day, small changes became worthy of attention: buds appearing, blossom opening, leaves returning.
There is something about that way of looking that feels particularly poignant now.
Hockney never stopped experimenting, but nor did he lose his fascination with the simplest subjects. A chair. A friend. A swimming pool. A road through the Yorkshire countryside. An apple tree coming into blossom.
His work reminds us that innovation does not always mean looking for something entirely new. Sometimes it means looking again — and looking more closely.
David Hockney died on 11 June 2026, aged 88. He leaves behind an extraordinary body of work, but perhaps also something less tangible: an invitation to remain curious about the world around us.
To notice colour. To notice light. And above all, to keep looking.