One of the Most Popular Serious Contemporary Artists

David Hockney was born in 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire.  He was trained at the Royal College of Art.  In 1964, he departed from London for California where he fell in love with the country and the lifestyle and where he has lived on and off ever since.

His popularity is based on the enormous, continuing appeal of his pictures and the popular perception of him as a colorful extrovert.  Hockney has consistently based his art directly on his experiences and on his relationship with other people.  He walks up and down the street a lot before he actually begins a piece of landscape painting.

Hockney wants to notice how something works and then do it.  Memory will thus once again come into play, shifting out unnecessary details in order to retain only the most compelling images and sensations.  The above painting was done by using a palette knife after I had a several trips on Ranch Palos Verdes, Southern California.