The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate, East Yorkshire In 2011 (twenty eleven) - 16 May

A pale track curves away from the viewer between banks of fresh green growth, with pale cow parsley in the lower left and tall hedgerow on either side. Overhead, dark purplish branches arch across the upper half of the image, carrying new leaves in small dabs of green. Ivy climbs the trunk at the right. The contrast between the open, sandy foreground and the dense, textured foliage gives the drawing its depth, which Hockney achieves through layered colour and varied mark-making. The date in the title is part of the work. The 2011 series follows the landscape around Woldgate through the months. A mid-May drawing falls at the point where the trees are coming into leaf. Hockney had returned to East Yorkshire in the mid-2000s and made the area his principal subject, working on large painted canvases as well as on the iPad. The drawings share their motifs with those paintings, but their scale and speed give them a diary-like immediacy. At 10 impressions, this edition is smaller than the 25 used for other prints in the series.