In the manner of David Hockney
British, b. 1937
Hawthorn in Blossom, Filmed, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
152 × 228 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.24.5
A hedge of hawthorn bursts white along a slope in spring, and a woman in a straw hat stands in front of it filming it on her phone. Far off, a tiny red tractor crosses a yellow field above the estuary. Hockney has spent years recording the arrival of spring, day by day, first in Yorkshire and then in Normandy. She is doing the same. He would tell her to look for longer.
The brief
A hedgerow bursting into blossom in flat bright greens and whites, a small figure filming it with a phone, a tractor far off. Contemporary painting in flat bright acrylic, clean Californian sunlight, saturated turquoise, pink, lime and yellow, simplified forms with crisp edges, patterned water and foliage, a calm sense of leisure and space, flat colour with occasional wobbly hand-drawn line, slight digital-drawing smoothness. Museum photograph of the acrylic painting, bright even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
