13/06/2026
Really can’t say enough to add to the tributes. He was from a generation of talented working class youngsters (including another favourite, David Bailey) who had the chance and seized it with everything they had. He was totally grounded with a dry sense of humour (a def. Yorkshire trait) and an absolute icon.
Born in Bradford, he later lived and painted in East Yorkshire - living half an hour up the coast from me in Brid. He spent hundreds of hours painting outside in the East Yorkshire Wolds. The work resulted in a major exhibition that launched in Yorkshire - Bigger Trees Near Warter. It broke visitor records in York and Hull (I worked in Yorkshire tourism at the time and we absolutely jumped on the opportunity- with launches, Hockney trails etc.) and set the scene for the 2012 Royal Academy, A Bigger Picture, with wall to wall trees painted en plein air.
Personally, I love his Californian paintings. The light, colour and movement. And his self portraits. He often looked bemused by the world around him. I met him very briefly at the York launch and I think this bemusement came through when he found himself showing a group of us star struck 20 and 30 year olds how he did work on his iPad 🙂❤️. A really lovely collective memory we all share.
