David Hockney Quotes & Sayings

I'm really only interested in technology that is about pictures. I'm interested in anything that makes a picture. — David Hockney

In one gallery they actually had a notice which said No Sketching. How obnoxious! I said, How do you think these things got on the walls if there was no sketching? — David Hockney

Painting and drawing has been here for 35,000 years. — David Hockney

I worked in the NHS as a hospital orderly during my national service, and people thought it was a noble service. But over the years it's lost its humanity. — David Hockney

Of course you can still paint landscape - it's not been worn out. — David Hockney

As you get older, it gets a bit harder to keep the spontaneity in you, but I work at it. — David Hockney

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus. — David Hockney

Who's going to ask a painter to see a diploma? They'd say, 'Can I see your paintings?', wouldn't they? — David Hockney

I do believe that painting can change the world. — David Hockney

I thought using three cameras was a lot better than one, because you could see where you were going, where you'd been, and all kinds of things - more like life. I think photography has colored our vision. We're now in an area where it might break something. I think this is a time. I feel it. I don't know whether I'll be here long enough to experience it. I've no plans to leave yet. — David Hockney

It's very British to go about to see something unusual and paint it. — David Hockney

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do? I mean you do. — David Hockney

If you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you feel quite alive. — David Hockney

I have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well. — David Hockney

Picasso is still influencing me. Of course, I haven't got that kind of energy, or skill. — David Hockney

There's a Chinese proverb that says it all: Painting is an old man's art. — David Hockney

Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life. — David Hockney

I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things. — David Hockney

I generally only paint people I know, I'm not a flatterer really. — David Hockney

Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft. — David Hockney

With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The LA Times fired a photographer at the beginning of the Iraq War for editing two shots together. Photography is crumbling. Certainly it is for the newspapers a bit now, isn't it? There will be painting again, absolutely! — David Hockney

Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting. — David Hockney

I am constantly preoccupied with how to remove distance so that we can all come closer together, so that we can all begin to sense we are the same, we are one. — David Hockney

I've realized that I can do performances. — David Hockney

I'm a very early riser, and I don't like to miss that beautiful early morning light. — David Hockney

I've always been a looker. Loads of people say, "I never saw that" - but that's what artists do. — David Hockney

I mean if you draw you like drawing, it's er, an activity you do all the time actually. — David Hockney

Because I'm interested in depiction, representation, therefore you're interested in photography. You don't ignore it. — David Hockney

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I know that now. — David Hockney

As for the world of fashion and celebrity, I have the usual interest in the human comedy, but the problems of depiction absorb me more. — David Hockney

If you go too far with naturalism, there is no need to even organize; just look ... and paint what you see until the canvas ends. — David Hockney

The 'how' has a great effect on what we see. To say that 'what we see' is more important than 'how we see it' is to think that 'how' has been settled and fixed. When you realize this is not the case, you realize that 'how' often affects 'what' we see. — David Hockney

There are enough no smoking places now. — David Hockney

Britain is a very small country with a very large press. — David Hockney

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles. — David Hockney

How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't. — David Hockney

When you're very young, you suddenly find this marvellous freedom. It's quite exciting, and you're prepared to do anything. — David Hockney

The moment you can learn to deal with homosexuality in art, it's quite an exciting moment, just as in a sense when people 'come out' it's quite an exciting moment. It means they become aware of their desires, and can deal with them in a remarkably honest way. — David Hockney

The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it. — David Hockney

Until I saw my drawings replayed on the iPad, I'd never seen myself draw. Someone watching me would be concentrating on the exact moment, but I'd always be thinking a little bit ahead. That's especially so in a drawing where you are limiting yourself, a line drawing for example. When you are doing them you are very tense, because you have to reduce everything to such simple terms. — David Hockney

I think the ambiguity of similarity and difference is very powerful. It's the same scene in different times of year read across the grid, and, of course, different locations reading vertically. But you can get confused and lost in the series. You force the mind, which is always comparing and contrasting, to stumble ... That ambiguity is very powerful. One is getting lost and refinding oneself. — David Hockney

I think I am seeing more clearly now than ever. — David Hockney

East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual. — David Hockney

The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway - it is called medication. — David Hockney

I love California; everything is so artificial. — David Hockney

All film directors, even the ones using 3-D today, want you to look at what they chose. — David Hockney

I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it. — David Hockney

I believe that the very process of looking can make a thing beautiful. — David Hockney

West Yorkshire is quite dramatic and beautiful, the crags and things. — David Hockney

It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things, examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people are. — David Hockney

I'm not going to stop painting just to take orders. — David Hockney

Photoshop came out of painting, and now it's going back to painting. — David Hockney

I thought the iPhone was great, but this takes it to a new level - simply because it's eight times the size of the iPhone, as big as a reasonably-sized sketchbook ... Anyone who likes drawing and mark-making will like to explore new media. — David Hockney

The moment I got a very big studio, everything took off. — David Hockney

It takes a long time to make it simple. — David Hockney

I'm rather shocked by what I thought was simple mindedness actually. I thought they're not looking, they're not actually looking. — David Hockney

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it. — David Hockney

How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique. — David Hockney

California is always in my mind. — David Hockney

I'm sure that the camera is part of European art. — David Hockney

I've always wanted to be able to paint the dawn. — David Hockney

In the end nobody knows how it's done - how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can. — David Hockney

I avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me. — David Hockney

My only worry is the painting I'm doing. Nothing else. — David Hockney

I'm coming 'round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world. — David Hockney

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting. — David Hockney

I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century. — David Hockney

Water in swimming pools changes its look more than in any other form its colour can be man-made and its dancing rhythms reflect not only the sky but, because of its transparency, the depth of the water as well. If the water surface is almost still and there is a strong sun, then dancing lines with the colours of the spectrum appear everywhere. — David Hockney

I was never that interested in movies. I was interested in them as a thing, but I didn't want to make movies. I always wanted to draw and paint. — David Hockney

I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s. — David Hockney

Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at it. — David Hockney

I'm a bit of a propagandist. — David Hockney

The cameras are getting smaller, they're getting more versatile, and eventually, I'm sure you'll have a camera with lots and lots of things on it so you can alter the picture. You could alter perspective. — David Hockney

Just because I'm cheeky, doesn't mean I'm not serious — David Hockney

It's no good saying I wished I could go out more, because I can't. But I don't bother about it too much. — David Hockney

Well, in Bradford I could say I was brought up in Bradford and Hollywood. — David Hockney

I can see that cinema seems to be finished. Everybody has a bigger screen at home. I'm assuming eventually you won't need a screen at all - these iPhones will just project. — David Hockney

To me, the world's rather beautiful if you look at it. Especially nature. — David Hockney

I live wherever I happen to be. — David Hockney

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them. — David Hockney

The lens is a tyranny. — David Hockney

In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves. — David Hockney

It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work. — David Hockney

About shadows: do we see shadows? Loads of people don't. A camera will notice a shadow, but how many people have got a shadow in front of them when they take a picture and don't notice it, and then they see it in the photograph because the photograph will catch the shadow. — David Hockney

I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is. — David Hockney

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light. — David Hockney

I think photography has made us see the landscape in a very dull way - that's one of its effects. It's not spatial. — David Hockney

The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography. — David Hockney

I did come from a pretty independent-minded family. — David Hockney

OH, I LIKE smoking, I do. I smoke for my health, my mental health. Tobacco gives you little pauses, a rest from life. I don't suppose anyone smoking a pipe would have road rage, would they? — David Hockney

Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe . And all early modernism is actually from out of Europe, when you think of cubism is African, is looking at Africa, Matisse is looking at the arabesque, Oceania. Europe was the optical projection that had become photography, that had become film, that became television and it conquered the world. — David Hockney

Once you start painting, you could of course get lost. I mean you get out of yourself, you don't know whether you're thinking, you just act actually sometimes. — David Hockney

We don't all see the same way at all. Even if I'm sitting looking at you, there is always the memory of you as well. And a memory is now. So someone who's never met you before is seeing a different person. That's bound to be the case. We all see something different. I assume most people don't look very hard at anything. — David Hockney

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny. — David Hockney

People tell me they open my e-mails first, because they aren't demands and you don't need to reply. They're simply for pleasure. — David Hockney

I'm a natural sceptic. — David Hockney

I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see. — David Hockney

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent. — David Hockney

I can often tell when drawings are done from photographs, because you can tell what they miss out, what the camera misses out: usually weight and volume - there's a flatness to them. — David Hockney

Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, 'Things don't look like that!' — David Hockney