(Or how Mr. Hockney’s work has influenced me over the past thirty years.)
When someone asks what artists have influenced my work, my standard off-the-cuff answer is “I don’t know…” which I know is rather lame, but is actually honest. I’ve never looked at another artist’s work and said to myself, “I want to do that.” I’m too much of a rebel for that approach. Instead, I’ll look at something and be amazed, in awe, let it soak in, and move on… It generally isn’t until much later that I’ll realize that my subconscious pulled from that work and integrated it in some way into my own.
How David Hockney has influenced my work is much like that. I was first exposed (haha, lame photographer’s joke!) to Hockney’s work in the mid 1980’s. I was taken to an exhibit in Berkeley that had several works by probably more than just Hockney, but all I remember was one giant piece that was a photo collage. It might have been Pear Blossom, but somehow I think it was something else. What I do remember is how amazed I was at the work that went into it and how all the small images created one larger image, and how I had no intention whatsoever to do such a thing. I had other things on my mind and different ideas I wanted to explore at that point and I was happy to just enjoy Hockney like anyone else might. It wasn’t until just recently that I considered how that might have influenced some of the work I’ve been doing lately, all these years down the road.
So when I found out that the de Young Museum in San Francisco was having a Hockney show, I put it on my must do list and put together a small group of art pals to make a day trip of it. I was not disappointed. Hockney’s recent foray into the landscape of his home turf in England resonated deeply with me, as did his use of several different panels pieced together. And then to see his “Cubist videos” was sheer heaven for me. I could have stood there immersed in his moving, mulit-perspective images of the woods along a road for even longer than I did. Let me just say that you know you’re standing there for a long time when all your artist pals have long since moved on…
Suddenly I found myself justified in my fascination with the same landscape that I have visited hundreds of times. Like Hockney, I’m always finding new things in these familiar places, I’m entranced by the changing seasons, and quite happy to document it and make it my own over and over. And even though we do it for different reasons, I was also happy to see how he pieced together both his paintings and his videos. I was also tickled to see that he has embraced the iPhone and the iPad into his creative process, and even more so to see the de Young include it in a major exhibition. If all of these things are good enough for David Hockney and the de Young, they’re good enough for me.
So now I am finding myself encouraged and yes, inspired, by the work of David Hockney. I was already working on creating photo mosaics with my iPhone on Instagram, so I find myself emboldened by Hockney’s example. I’ll try to remember to post some studio shots of what I’m working on in the near future and you’ll see what I mean.
