A Personal Tribute to David Hockney - One of the Greats of my Lifetime

Hockney was born in 1937 and by the time I was in my teens in the 70's and knew I was going to be an artist, he was well and truly on my radar, as not only a pop artist, but as a painter of people in interiors and of sensitively rendered, intimate portrait drawings of friends such as any artist (like me) would have in their daily sketchbook.

Hockney Portrait Drawing

My first trip to England (from Australia) was as a 21 year old. My artist mother Joan Bauer had been born in Bradford, as had Hockney, so naturally I went there. It was a pretty bleak place but it had produced these two artists. Maybe people from such places have a need to create beauty. I don't remember much except that I purchased a tiny book of the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin illustrated by Hockney. I loved it but unfortunately on a wave a misguided largesse, I gave it to a friend who was having a baby. Even back then I wished I'd given a different gift. She never loved it like I would have.

Rumpelstiltskin by Hockney

Other artists may understand the dilemma of becoming known and applauded for work of one subject matter in one medium and then moving on to something new only to have that new work ignored. Hockney never worried about that. He stuck to his guns and continually changed and evolved in painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, stage design, ipad works, video and new technologies such as A>I>

In his early prints he referenced Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (the subject of my thesis back in the day) and this further endeared him to me. I have always appreciated artwork referencing other artwork like composers, with "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" by Rachmaninoff you get two masterpieces for the price of one.

As a Queenslander I could easily relate to Hockney's swimming pools so they didn't strike me as dramatically different as they probably did to the English. Pools like that are everywhere here.

One of the Swimming Pool Series

I am not going to try and cover every aspect of Hockney's career as others have done it so well since his recent death in June this year 2026, but the next phase of his work to really strike a chord with me, was his dog paintings.

He said he wasn't painting the dogs (Stanley and Boodgie) as such. He was painting his love of them.

I felt this was such a brave series. So simple, paired back, but daring in its straightforward "Look at us, we're just little pets on rugs and in baskets." The formal shape of them and the colours are of course perfect but it's the ordinariness of the subject matter that I find brave. We've all painted our cats and dogs but not shared them due to a worry about seeming to lapse into sentimentality. Hockney never worried about this. He painted SO MANY obsessively. I love them.

I don't love everything he did. Naturally there are peaks and troughs, works that resonate and works that don't so much.

His colour has been much admired but perhaps the most most moving to me of all his output was a series of Black and white charcoal drawings from 2013.

In 2019 I flew to Amsterdam for the 350 year anniversary of Rembrandt. While there I visited the Van Gogh Museum. There was a travelling show on. Hockney - Van Gogh. The Joy of Nature.

Believe it or not, at first I was annoyed. I didn't travel 16,000 km to see Hockney. I cam e to see the Flemish, the Dutch, the Old Masters. In my entire trip nothing moved me more than this exhibition - specifically an installation of 26 charcoal drawings.

Hockney's Charcoal Drawings

Close-up of six of the Charcoal Drawings

I stood in front of it and wept, and to this day I can't explain why. These phots of it say nothing compared to the reality of seeing the originals. I will try to clarify, demystify, break down my reaction.

I felt I was there, sitting on my art stool, in those lanes, drawing those leaves, those trees, with the simplest and most direct of materials - charcoal. The directness, honesty, simplicity and reality of those overgrown hedgerows inspired me for several years to follow. I did black and white ink drawings of the Mt Coot0tha Botanic Gardens and then eventually charcoal of many of Brisbane's trees. Not influenced by but inspired by. And speaking of inspiration, Hockney doesn't have a lot of time for the concept. He says "Artists are workers. They should get back to the studio and just get on with it." I concur.

The beautiful landscape works and the ipad works speak for themselves.

Here are a few of my favourites.

Hockney with one of his landscape paintings.

Hockney at work in the studio.

Hockney towards the end of his life inside one of his ipad projections.

The art world has lost a Titan.

I feel like I've lost a friend and kindred spirit.

If you haven't read the erudite Martin Gayford's impressive book, then remedy that situation as soon as possible.

Such a good read.

Some of my favourites from my library.

Over the past few months there've been so many tributes to Hockney by people who knew him. My favourite is by Australian critic John McDonald who said about Hockney -

"He was garrulous. big-hearted, and so deaf as to be largely unimpeded by anyone else's contributions to the conversation".

So on that amusing and personal note I'd finish by saying that Hockney the man and Hockney the artist have really left their mark.