The Arrival of Spring
Paying attention to the changing landscape
I’ve been trying to channel David Hockney in order to have a higher fondness for the changing of the seasons, to try and appreciate this in between stage of winter and spring. Hockney has routinely traveled to locations in England and France to spend extended time observing the minute changes in the landscape from season to season, and day to day. From February to July 2020 he concentrated on the arrival and progression of spring in Normandy. He wasn’t planning on doing much else but observing and creating, so oddly the pandemic didn’t make much of a difference. Instead, he carried on with his work of paying attention to the trees, shrubs, and meadows that surrounded his absurdly adorable country home. And his medium of choice for this daily drawing: his iPad, a technology he has embraced since it first hit the market fourteen years ago.
In 2013, I attended a Hockney exhibition at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco that focused on the work he had created in the previous ten years but took up the space of a major career retrospective. I hadn’t realized just how insanely prolific he was until I saw A Bigger Exhibition. Some of his early iPad paintings made appearances, including a video projected on a wall showcasing one digital brushstroke at a time, exactly how he went about rendering Yosemite Valley. It was wild to observe an artist’s process so intimately. To witness how they went about capturing a landscape step-by-step. To have some insight into their creative process.
Yes, the iPad paintings are digital artworks, but they have the same energy, punch, and varying brushwork as Hockney’s beloved paintings, drawings, and lithographs. There are a dozen different ways he depicts grass, delicate petals feel light in each composition, and trees take on new identities depending on the light. Hockney’s hand is present in every mark made upon the digital page. For his spring spent in bucolic Normandy, he worked en plein air as much as possible, and living within his subject allowed unfettered access to each subtle change in the landscape. Fruit trees are depicted in every stage of bloom; the farmhouse pond is patterned in an onslaught of raindrops, and the next day placid, littered with petals; an overcast sky serves as an open door for exploring texture, pattern, and color. It is said that the spring of 2020 was one of the most abundantly spectacular eruptions of new growth in the French countryside in decades. That feels very apparent in the work Hockney made during this time. These paintings are a joyful celebration, not just of nature, but of life itself.
Given that all of the work Hockney was making existed on his iPad, sharing it with others was possible with just a few clicks. Friends were sent paintings, sometimes on the same day they were created, while newspapers and the BBC published his new landscapes and still lives in an effort to uplift the public’s spirits. Throughout it all, he was regularly sending fresh digital paintings to his friend and collaborator, art critic Martin Gayford. They’d then hop on a call to discuss the progress of Hockney’s work, routinely ambling over to debates about major players in art history, ideas presented by Hockney’s long-standing studio assistants, and the artist’s storied career of rendering water. Excerpts from their conversations were transcribed and published into a captivating book that at its core advocates for paying closer attention to and savoring the natural world. As Gayford says of Hockney, “it is not the place that is intrinsically interesting; it is the person looking at it.”
I may not be outside drawing the trees each day, but I am trying my damndest to appreciate this weird time of year when you can experience a wide swath of the weather spectrum over the course of one week. I was reveling in the sun mere days ago and then was grouchy yesterday because it snowed and I’m just really over snow at this point. I’m embarrassed to admit that in these transitional moments of the seasons, my mood is dictated by the weather. It’s not a great place to be, I’m well aware of that, but it’s where I’m at and we’re working through it.
So I take some deep breaths and think about Hockney. I imagine he would be utterly delighted to experience the woods as they are today: barely hinting at the fact that in another month they’ll be adorned in a blanket of trillium blooms. He would revel in the bark of the birch trees and how the branches glow in the late afternoon light. And he would absolutely be enamored to see how the lakeshore shifts each day depending on how the wind falls upon the bay. Just the act of observing these scenes as if I were to draw them with pencil or brush has shifted my perspective. I can’t help but imagine the landscapes before me as if they were rendered in Hockney’s hand, how many colors he’d extract from the forest, how many textural details he’d bring into focus.
Still, despite my best efforts, I find myself day dreaming of when there will be significantly more green in my field of vision. When a jump into the lake will be refreshing and not an exercise in cold plunging. When fresh blooms will emerge from the ground in a riot of color. I’ve become somewhat fixated on the bloom part, having a deep desire to not only encounter flowers when I walk outside, but to paint them. Not the most original idea, but it’s here and I’m into it. So I’m off to the store this afternoon to buy a bouquet and give it a go.
One of my favorite stories about Hockney is the morning routine he established fifteen years ago in which his boyfriend would bring him fresh flowers and set them in a vase on a table near Hockney’s bed. And so, first using his iPhone and then transitioning to an iPad, he would start his day painting a bouquet while nibbling on breakfast in bed. I cannot think of a more romantic or charming morning ritual. It’s wonderfully aspirational and quite frankly, may be something I require from a future romantic partner.
Even if you are one of the people I’m jealous of and you just returned home from a stroll filled with vibrant greens and fresh flowers around each corner, I hope Hockney’s uplifting depictions of spring help you celebrate this time of renewal. My latest playlist is mellow, uplifting, and a bit weird at times, just like early spring. Give it a listen, maybe dance a bit, and take a note from Hockney to look more intensely at your surroundings. You might even find yourself needing to pick up a pencil and start drawing.
— Katie