David Hockney 20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures Series For Sale

20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures, 2021, by David Hockney expands on his prolific output of Ipad drawings created during the first year of the global pandemic (The Arrival of Spring: Normandy). Isolated in his new ‘paradise’ his 17^th century rustic home in the picturesque village of Beuvron-en-Auge, Normandy, France, Hockney continued to depict the natural wonders from the rebirth of flowers during the changing seasons to vast rural landscapes and interior still life.

Hockney’s mastery of the new digital medium is unique for a contemporary artist whose artistic oeuvre began over 60 years ago: he loves the pace and immediacy of it as you can just ‘erase a brushstroke so there are no ‘mistakes.’’ Yet unbelievably he manages to convey large three-dimensional areas and spatial perspectives on a flat two-dimensional screen surface.

To look at the 20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures is to experience a meditation on art about art: the images instantly evoke the still life works of Matisse, 17^th Eastern art philosophy which created paintings not for walls but to viewed intimately as scrolls, and the medieval Bayeaux tapestry (which Hockney emulated in his 314 feet long continuous frieze of 220 pictures together called A Year in Normandie).

First reproduced by the German newspaper, Die Welt, and later debuted at Musee Matisse in Nice, Hockney created a series of twenty still life flower Ipad ‘paintings,’ which capture various arrangements of brightly coloured blooms situated on gingham tablecloths against burgundy walls. Hockney comments on the starting point of the series, ‘I was just sitting at the table in our house, and I caught sight of some flowers in a vase on the table. A few days later I started another from the same position with the same ceramic vase. This took longer to do. I then realized if I put the flowers in a glass vase the sun would catch the water, and painting glass would be a more interesting thing to do. So then I was off.”

In a similar vein to early series of Hockney’s such as Lithographic Water Made of Lines (see viewing rooms) the artist manages to entice a viewer’s gaze across a series that only makes small variations to each image, such as the colour of the gingham tablecloth and different species of flowers. The focus of the series remains the floral compositions, contrasting tones and textures and the balance of colour, line and form to create a discourse on the nature of renewal and rebirth.