Hockney Quotes & Sayings

The problem is, photographic dyes and printing inks aren't as good as paint, actually. — David Hockney

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

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

I believe that the problem of how you depict something is a formal problem. It's an interesting one and it's a permanent one; there's no solution to it. There are a thousand and one ways you can go about it. There's no set rule. — 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 was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard. — David Hockney

All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it? — David Hockney

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

Movie actors disappear - any young person wouldn't know Cary Grant. They're going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually - except perhaps paintings and drawings. — David Hockney

Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time. — David Hockney

Only after seeing the winter, do you comprehend the richness of summer. This was a big theme, and one I could confidently do: the infinite variety of nature. — Martin Gayford

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

I'm fed up with being bossed around. — David Hockney

I think I'm greedy, but I'm not greedy for money - because that can be a burden - I'm greedy for an exciting life. I want it to be exciting all the time, and I get it, actually. On the other hand, I can find excitement, I admit, in raindrops falling on a puddle and a lot of people wouldn't. I intend to have it exciting until the day I fall over. — Martin Gayford

Dawn is about luminosity and so is the iPhone ... The little drawings of the dawn are done while I'm still in bed ... If you're in my kind of business you'd be a fool to sleep through that ... Artists can't work office hours, can they? — David Hockney

The video camera dominates art. It's a bore, it makes everything look a bit the same. If you look at things with a pencil and paper in your hand, you are going to see far more. — David Hockney

There would be no bohemia without smoking. — David Hockney

It's difficult to talk about colour, even remember colour actually. — David Hockney

There's no-one up there in Northern Norway , food's terrible, but it's very, very beautiful to look at, if you've got eyes, and enjoy looking. — 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

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair. — David Hockney

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything. — David Hockney

It's a myth that if you're liked by only four people it must be good. It might also be very bad: they might be your mother, your brother, your uncle and your aunt. — 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

You must plan to be spontaneous. — David Hockney

On the iPhone I tended to draw with my thumb. Whereas the moment I got to the iPad, I found myself using every finger. — David Hockney

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous. — Michael Caine

Like people, trees are all individuals. — David Hockney

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary. — David Hockney

Until cubism, all art, all pictures, could be 'read' by anybody. If this hadn't been so, the Christian message wouldn't have been seen by peasants and its importance would have been diminished. — David Hockney

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

He agreed with David Hockney that an artist really had to be able to draw before anything else could be achieved. — Alexander McCall Smith

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

The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be. — David Hockney

Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about ... I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there ... to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution ... — David Hockney

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

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent. — David Hockney

Eight years ago, I wouldn't have painted this subject I'm starting now: a clearing filled with grasses. It would have seemed too much of a jumble. I had to keep looking and drawing, and looking. Now, because of all that time I spent drawing these grasses, I know what I'm looking for. — Martin Gayford

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

When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work. That's the mistake; it's not rejecting it, it's saying, 'I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.' — David Hockney

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

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make. — David Hockney

I'm very attracted to the great open spaces of the West. — David Hockney

I'm not one of those artists having people there lying around on their paintings, you know, like Hockney or whoever. — Peter Doig

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

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

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

What I didn't know was I was deeply attracted to the big space. — David Hockney

I'm a natural sceptic. — David Hockney

But the moment you use an ordinary camera, you are not seeing the picture, remember, meaning, you had to remember what you've taken. Now you could see it of course, with a digital thing, but remember in 1982 you couldn't. — David Hockney

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington. — 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

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

I'm not antisocial. I like people. — 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

People from the village come up and tease me: 'We hear you've started drawing on your telephone.' And I tell them, 'Well, no, actually, it's just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad,' — David Hockney

The thing with high-tech is that you always end up using scissors. — David Hockney

Time is the great mystery anyway. And it's still the great mystery in the moving picture as well. — David Hockney

Tobacco is America's greatest gift to the world! — David Hockney

I never talk when I'm drawing a person, especially if I'm making line drawings. I prefer there to be no noise at all so I can concentrate more. — 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

Anything simple always interests me. — David Hockney

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

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

The picture itself is a document. How do you mean? We're looking at a document. It gives you clues. — 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

I don't value prizes of any sort. — David Hockney

The high-definition picture is still a perspective picture. That's the real problem, the perspective picture. — 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

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

Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all. — David Hockney

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

Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that. — David Hockney

After I'd drawn the grasses, I started seeing them. Whereas if you'd just photographed them, you wouldn't be looking as intently as you do when you are drawing, so it wouldn't affect you that much. — Martin Gayford

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

Technology brought in the mass media and technology is now taking it away. — David Hockney

The editing of moving pictures is geared toward the single image. You'd have to edit things in new ways. — David Hockney

But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years. — David Hockney

You would think death was an optional extra nowadays. Nobody wants to tick that box. — David Hockney

With watercolour, you can't cover up the marks. There's the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture might tell another story as well. — David Hockney

If you are not playful you are not alive. — David Hockney

I go and see anything that's visually new, any technology that's about picture-making. The technology won't make the pictures different, but someone using it will. — David Hockney

The only people who need degrees are dentists and brain surgeons. — 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

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer, and clearer still. The image is passing through you in a physiological way, into your brain, into your memory - where it stays - it's transmitted by your hands. — Martin Gayford

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

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

Most people feel that the world looks like the photograph. I've always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile. This is what I grope at. — Martin Gayford

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way. — David Hockney

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time. — David Hockney