David Hockney,Winter Timber, 2009, Oil on 15 canvases, 274 x 609.6 cm,  Copyright David Hockney, Photo credit: Jonathan Wilkinson 

The biggest ever UK exhibition of landscape paintings by a living British artist opens 21 January 2012 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The exhibition includes David Hockney’s new and vivid paintings inspired by the Yorkshire landscape and some are huge in scale; the painting above is over 6 metres wide.

David Hockney, Woldgate Woods, 2006, oil on 6 canvases, 182 x 366 cm, copyright David Hockney, Photo credit: Richard Schmidt 

Using fashionable technology Hockney has created intense observations of an unfashionable subject: landscapes. Hockney, 74, has created some of the pictures in the exhibition on iPad and then printed on paper.  He’s also made a series of films using 18 cameras which will be displayed on multiple screens.

David Hockney, A Closer Winter Tunnel, February – March, 2006, oil on 6 canvases, 182 x 365 cm, photo credit: Richard Schmidt 

David Hockney, 2010, Woldgate Woods, Film still, courtesy of the artist, copyright David Hockney 

Famous for his depictions of southern California, where he settled in the 1960s, Hockney explained that period also influenced how he painted East Yorkshire on his return in 2005.

Perhaps in a pointed reference to other high profile artists, he has commented that all the paintings were done by him personally and not by assistants. Assistants helped him piece the work together but he put the ‘marks on the canvas’.

Tickets can be booked in advance but be prepared for the crowds.

David Hockney, Pearblossom Highway, 1986, photographic collage,119.4 x 163.8 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. gift of David Hockney, copyright David Hockney 

David Hockney, The Road Across the Wolds, 1997, oil on canvas, 121 x 152 cm, private collection,copyright David Hockney, photo credit: Steve Oliver 

David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture
Main Galleries, Royal Academy, London
21 January 2012 – 9 April 2012