David Hockney at the National Portrait Gallery

Gregory in the Pool (Pool Paper 4)” (1978), the work seen in the middle here in the new David Hockney exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery (@nationalportraitgallery) in London is a work created with colored paper pulp. Basically it is a sheet of paper with the artwork embedded inside it.

Hockney and printer Ken Tyler worked on these artworks in Tyler’s workshop in upstate New York, using an innovative process of moulding and pressing colored paper pulp according to the layouts of compositions of shimmering swimming pools.

Hockney later said about this process: It is the exact opposite of an etching needle. An etching needle has a fine point, you put it on a lovely wax surface and you are drawing with a line. Here line meant nothing. It couldn’t be line; it had to be mass, it had to be color.

The works on the left and right are also of Hockney’s long time friend Gregory Evans. A charcoal drawing on paper (2012) on the left and a Picasso-style lithograph called An Image of Gregory from 1984-1985.

Unfortunately the exhibition “Drawing from Life” is now closed, as all museums in London shut down. Hopefully the works can be enjoyed again by many very soon!