David Hockney's My Normandy series represents a pivotal moment in the artist's long and prolific career. Created in 2019 after Hockney relocated to the French countryside, the series reflects a return to direct observation and an immersive engagement with place. Executed as richly coloured inkjet prints, the works celebrate the everyday landscape surrounding the artist's home in Normandy, transforming familiar views into vivid meditations on light, space, and time.
Rather than seeking grand or iconic scenery, Hockney turns inward, focusing on what lies immediately in front of him. This emphasis on proximity, on seeing deeply rather than widely, is central to My Normandy. On display in the gallery are two works that encapsulate this approach with clarity: In Front of House Looking North and In Front of House Looking East. Seen together, these prints offer complementary perspectives on the same setting, revealing how subtle changes in direction and viewpoint can dramatically alter the emotional register of a landscape.
In Front of House Looking North
In Front of House Looking North presents a structured, grounded view of Hockney's Normandy home. The house itself dominates the composition, its traditional half-timbered façade and steeply pitched roof rendered with crisp lines and confident colour. A gently curving driveway leads the eye into the scene, guiding the viewer toward the entrance and reinforcing a sense of arrival and permanence.
The northern orientation lends the work a quiet solidity. The palette, while characteristically vibrant, feels measured and balanced. Greens are dense and layered, framing the architecture and emphasising the sense of enclosure and shelter. There is little theatrical light here; instead, Hockney offers a steady, consistent view, one shaped by repetition and daily familiarity.
This perspective speaks to routine and lived experience. It is a view encountered repeatedly, perhaps unconsciously, yet here it is elevated through careful observation. The absence of dramatic flourish allows the composition to feel deeply reassuring. It suggests a relationship with place built over time, where understanding comes not from novelty, but from attention.
In a broader sense, the northern view reflects Hockney's enduring interest in how we occupy space. The house is not a backdrop, but an active presence - a structure that anchors the surrounding landscape and gives it meaning. The print quietly asserts that home itself can be a subject worthy of sustained artistic focus.
In Front of House Looking East
In contrast, In Front of House Looking East introduces a more expansive and lyrical mood. The house remains present, but the composition opens outward toward a pond, allowing reflections of trees and sky to animate the scene. Water plays a central role here, doubling the landscape and introducing movement, light, and visual rhythm.
The eastern orientation is significant. Traditionally associated with morning light and beginnings, the eastward view feels fresh and full of possibility. Hockney captures this through a heightened use of colour and a more fluid sense of space. Reflections shimmer across the surface of the pond, softening the architectural lines and creating a dialogue between solidity and transience.
Small narrative details, a car positioned near the water, a treehouse nestled among branches, lend the work a gentle sense of storytelling. These elements humanise the landscape without overwhelming it, reminding us that this is not an idealised pastoral scene, but a lived environment shaped by daily activity and quiet observation. Where the northern view offers stability, the eastern view invites contemplation. It suggests change, movement, and the passing of time. The viewer is encouraged to linger, to follow reflections and subtle shifts in colour, and to consider how light transforms familiar surroundings from moment to moment.
Two Directions, One Experience
Displayed together, In Front of House Looking North and In Front of House Looking East reveal the conceptual strength of the My Normandy series. These are not isolated images, but part of an ongoing visual conversation about how we experience place. Hockney demonstrates that a single subject, viewed from different directions, can yield entirely distinct emotional and spatial readings.
This approach aligns with Hockney's long-standing interest in multiple perspectives and the act of looking itself. Rather than presenting a fixed, authoritative view, he invites the viewer to move between viewpoints. In doing so, the works resist a single interpretation and instead reward sustained engagement. Within the gallery space, these prints encourage a similar movement. As viewers shift between the north and east perspectives, they become acutely aware of how direction influences mood, composition, and meaning. The experience mirrors Hockney's own process: looking again, looking longer, and allowing place to reveal itself gradually.
The Enduring Appeal of My Normandy
My Normandy stands as a testament to Hockney's belief that profound artistic insight can emerge from the everyday. Created during a period of personal and global transition, the series affirms the value of attentiveness and the pleasure of close looking. These works are intimate without being insular, specific yet universally resonant. The works reminds us that landscape is not static. It changes with light, direction, and time and so do we as viewers.
