Still Life With Curtains And Two Red Chairs And Table
Signed Print

With its red, blue, green and black palette, Still Life With Curtains is instantly recognisable as part of the Home Made Prints series. As well as its vivid tones the work stands out for its range of textures which also characterises the series. The lush curtains are rendered with broad brushstrokes while the floor and the leaves appear to have been drawn with a crayon. Elsewhere fine lines pick out the grain of the wood of the table and black felt tip marks outline the stems and petals of the flowers. Admittedly all these could be elements of a lithograph but the photocopier belies itself in the surface of the vase, which appears grainy to the eye. Together the effect is of great dynamism, the different colours and textures lending both surface and depth to this cheerful scene. Here we see Hockney’s freedom in the medium coming to the fore – a freedom that allowed him to experiment and create independently and spontaneously, without the help of any assistants. Hockney has been experimenting with various printing techniques throughout his career and today we see these early experiments with the photocopier live on in his iPad drawings which have kept the artist as relevant today as he was in the ’80s.