Green Grey Blue Plant July
Signed Print

1986 was an important year for Hockney; he purchased his first office photocopier in a bid to claim more agency in the printmaking process, and he produced his first photo collage. Made with the photocopier, many of the works in the Home Made Prints series from this year appear to foreshadow the collages, through their almost obsessive fragmentation and layering. With this industrial machine Hockney found that the complications of lithography – which required the assistance of a print workshop – had been removed. There was no need for a stone or a plate, he could draw or paint directly onto a sheet of paper and copy it, feeding the resulting sheet through again to add the layers of colour using a different ink cartridge. As well as drawing onto the sheets Hockney photocopied a number of objects in order to create an impression of mixed media and in this work we see him using what looks like a rattan or wicker basket to create a woven effect on the sheet. This is offset by the cool green of the plant’s leaves which appear manually coloured in as with a pencil or crayon. Elsewhere further texture is added with fine lines, which lend a dynamism to the still composition, washes of colour and pointillist sections of shadow.