Hockney and the iPhone, continued…

Following up on my post from the other day, it seems the New York Review of Books has more details on David Hockney’s use of the iPhone to create art.

Apparently, Hockney has been regularly “painting” with the iPhone app Brushes, then emailing his miniature works to friends. His three main subjects are self portraits, flowers and the dawn.

Having spent most of the past 30 years in California, Hockney is reveling in the opportunity of being able to paint the sun rising in the east over water; not to mention the convenience of having a miniature electronic easel with him at all times. As he told the reporter, Lawrence Weschler:

After all, what clearer, more luminous light are we ever afforded? Especially here where the light comes rising over the sea, just the opposite of my old California haunts. But in the old days one never could, because, of course, ordinarily it would be too dark to see the paints; or else, if you turned on a light so as to be able to see them, you’d lose the subtle gathering tones of the coming sun. But with an iPhone, I don’t even have to get out of bed, I just reach for the device, turn it on, start mixing and matching the colors, laying in the evolving scene.

[...]It’s always there in my pocket, there’s no thrashing about, scrambling for the right color. One can set to work immediately, there’s this wonderful impromptu quality, this freshness, to the activity; and when it’s over, best of all, there’s no mess, no clean-up. You just turn off the machine. Or, even better, you hit Send, and your little cohort of friends around the world gets to experience a similar immediacy. There’s something, finally, very intimate about the whole process.

There is a brilliant audio slideshow that accompanies the piece, featuring a series of images of the dawn that Hockney emailed to friends every three minutes, the sky and the sea changing color as the sun rises.

And I love the kicker:

“People from the village,” he says, craning back over that shoulder, “come up to me and tease me, ‘We hear you’ve started drawing on your telephone.’ And I tell them, ‘Well, no, actually, it’s just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad.’”

David Hockney’s iPhone Passion (NYRB)