EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Hockney Draws Rain or Shine

When an artist paints a subject, what is most likely to dominate their thoughts: the subject, the process of creating it or both? Well, you all know the answer to that one. Still, it was sweet to read David Hockney confirm it while discussing his prints on the weather. It shows that the mind-set is very pervasive at all levels, perhaps even unavoidable among real artists. Here is what he had to say about a 1973 lithograph, in particular, one called "Rain" in which the subject drips down the paper like ink itself (above).

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David Hockney: "Well,….the only thing I had in my head was, I chose a subject, I thought, I’ll do the weather.  And I had the rain, for instance; I had done a painting in London very similar to it, which I had called The Japanese Rain on Canvas.  This was stained on to the canvas on the floor, first, and the rain is painted on later."

Interviewer: "You made the drips in […] the same way?"

Hockney: "I did, but that was kind of once I’d got it going.  I mean I did it kind of as a joke really.  I loved the idea of the rain as it hit the ink it would make the ink run.  The moment I thought of the idea I couldn’t resist it.  So I was sort of […].

"The point really was that as the prints grew, the subject matter which on the surface is the weather, but the other subject matter is really the weather drawn.  Because in each one the problem was, not just making a representation of the weather, but how to draw it.

"I liked the problem of how to draw a mist.  The one thing I didn’t really want to do was spray it: you know, it’s too easy … At first I wanted to do it with light, just ruling the light.  And it didn’t really quite work.  In the end we designed some ways to do it.  But it was finding out just ways of doing it.  It means that the subject of the prints is not just the weather: the subject matter is drawing.

"The prints here of the wind, for instance, I couldn’t quite figure out how to do wind, make a visual representation of wind, because normally only the effects of wind show themselves.  So I kept thinking of palm trees bending and everything, and it all seemed just a little bit corny or ordinary or something, and I was just on the beach at Malibu one day and suddenly a piece of paper blew by, and it suddenly dawned on me, I’ll simply do all the other prints I’ve done blowing away across Melrose Avenue."¹


 

1. From the transcript of a video "Ken Tyler: Master Printer". Ken Tyler, a veteran print-maker, has worked with Hockney for many years. Online at: [url=http://nga.gov.au/InternationalPrints/Tyler/Default.cfm?MnuID=8&vidmnu=1]http://nga.gov.au/InternationalPrints/Tyler/Default.cfm?MnuID=8&vidmnu=1[/url] (July 13th 2013)