There’s not much that hasn’t already been written about David Hockney and his migration from LA back Yorkshire in the LA Times profile of the painter. It’s still worth reading for Hockney’s own elegiac reckoning with his return home:
Bridlington is several hours from London, he notes, making drop-in company unlikely, and the nearest town is 25 miles away. He calls it “a sleepy little place,” of only about 30,000 people. “If you were young, you would leave it. But it’s a tranquil place for me. Because the office is in L.A., somebody else is doing the work. My only worry is the painting I’m doing. Nothing else.”
He recently learned his ancestors were farm laborers. “Probably that’s why I feel something for the landscape,” he says. “There’s a 35-mile radius of wonderful agricultural ground there. Quiet villages. Totally unspoiled. No white lines in the road. Yours is the only car. I realized that winter had far more color than I thought, and you get used to a bit of cold. In summer, it’s light at 4:30 in the morning and not dark until 11:30 at night. I’m a very early riser, and I don’t like to miss that beautiful early morning light. It’s a great place for me to have found at my age.”
The Worlds of David Hockney (Los Angeles Times)
