Chance to see David Hockney’s iPad doodles: The octogenarian artist fearlessly embraces tech to create fresh artworks
David Hockney lived in California for most of his life, but moved back to Bridlington in east Yorkshire – where he grew up – in 2005. Returning home proved beneficial for his state of mind and artistic output. Having built a glittering career on the back of sunny, semi-abstract paintings of salubrious LA living, the Briton found himself producing painting after painting, drawing after drawing, of the British countryside.
5 March
He produced thousands of works in the eight years before he moved back to California (following a stroke and the accidental death of one his studio assistants), some of which were done in his new favourite medium: the iPad.
12 April
The pixel – tiny, square, sexless – seems antithetical to everything David Hockney stood for as an artist, but he finds new technologies liberating.
18 May
“I do think the iPad is a new art form,” he says. “Much better than a lithograph. Inkjet printing is more vivid — the colour stays exactly the same. The prints use an awful lot of pigment. But the bigger they get, they don’t fade, don’t pixelate. Some [iPad drawings] take two or three days to draw, and they were all drawn knowing they would be printed bigger.”
2 June
Hockney’s iPad drawings are made using the Brushes app and a stylus and a digital inkjet printer.
29 December
David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring, is on at Annely Juda Fine Art from today