David Hockney - Artist Of The Week

I can't believe I've not included David Hockney before this. Did you know we share a birthday? He was celebrating his 21st birthday when I was born. No wonder he's such a cool dude. 

A few years ago I was watching a BBC program highlighting the work of David Hockney.  The BBC Program called The Art Of Seeing. 

Andrew Marr was the host of the show. Andrew starts the program looking over the North Sea sketching the sunrise on his iPad. In the introduction, he said David Hockney, at the time in his 70s, did a sketch on his iPad every morning and sent it to his friends. That's such a great idea. Apparently, at the time, Hockey got up at 5 am every morning to do these little sketches and send them to his friends.  

When I first saw this program, I thought of starting my blog and doing a sketch a day and posting it to my blog. I kept it up for a couple of months. It was exhausting. 

That kind of work ethic is impressive in my book, and if you keep a book, I'm sure it would be impressive in yours as well. 

He's from Yorkshire but lived a lot of his life in New York and California. He was an acquaintance of Andy Warhol's crew and hung out for a while with them too. Most of his time was spent in Southern California. 

I love that he's 81 years old and is still making stuff and using new technologies.  He says painters are workers. You can't create unless you work and he says he works every day. 

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Hockney's paintings sell for prices in the millions. Last November, one of his paintings sold for $90 million. At the time it is the most expensive work of a living artist sold at auction. It broke the previous record of $58 million set in 2013. 

​If you want to learn more about that painting and the sale you can visit the Christies Website. 

You should check him out. Especially the interviews with him on YouTube. He's just an easy going relaxed kind of a person, comfortable in his skin. I like that kind of person. 

You can learn more about him on Wikipedia and at the David Hockey Foundation Website. 

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