David Hockney and the art of the iPad

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Bridlington, England--David Hockney is pretty isolated here in Yorkshire, some four hours by train from London, but that’s the way he likes it. Ensconced near the quiet rural landscape he’s immortalized in paintings and watercolors, he has more time not only to draw but to experiment with new ways of making art. “We think we’re way ahead here,” he confides. “We need this little remote place to be observant about the medium.”

The art-making medium he’s using most these days is the iPad, brother to the iPhone, which he took up earlier. Whether he’s lying in bed or driving through snow-covered woods, his ever-ready iPhone and iPad are always by his side. They keep him in touch with not only his craft but a small group of friends and colleagues who regularly receive his colorful missives of landscapes, flowers, cap or ashtray.

He is 73, his trademark blond hair now gray, but few people are as curious and willing to try new things as David Hockney. At his enormous studio on what he calls “the Pico Boulevard of Bridlington,” Hockney is still painting the colorful canvases that made him famous. But as he simultaneously draws on luminous electronic surfaces and experiments with multi-screen video projections, he is assembling people and resources to take him and his art into the future.

You can read more about David Hockney, his iPad drawings and his life in Yorkshire in Arts & Books; click here.

--Barbara Isenberg

Image above: ‘UNTITLED, 2 JANUARY 2011, 1’. iPad drawing. Credit: David Hockney