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IN THE STUDIO WITH RUBY, MAY 2019

IN his ninth decade David Hockney decided to move to France. To Normandy and a farmhouse where he set up a studio to paint the arrival of spring. “I know I’m 82, but I feel 30 in the studio when I get going,” he tells Martin Gayford in a new book, Spring Cannot be Cancelled.

Gayford’s book recounts conversations with Hockney about the artist’s own paintings and his thoughts on other artists (“Japanese artists are often excellent at weather”), movie soundtracks, fame and sunsets. In short, it’s an account of Hockney’s enthusiasms and interests, his commitment to his work and his energy for life and work.

“It’s true painting every day wouldn’t suit everybody, but it suits me,” Hockney says at one point. “If you do that, you live in the now.”

© David Hockney Photograph: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima David & Ruby in the Normandy studio, May 25, 2020