Encounters, remembering David Hockney
Encounters, remembering David Hockney* I’ve written on Authors Electric previously about 1960s meetings with Paul McCartney (roughly ten minutes) and poet Barry MacSweeney (a good deal longer), and so the recent death of David Hockney prompted some thoughts and memories which I thought I’d share with readers of this blog. I met him in 1968, or it may have been 1969, I can’t quite remember the year. Time often blurs the boundaries of our thinking. Anyway, he came to our college literary society to give a talk about his art and he spoke to his audience of degree students for an hour or so about his growing success as an artist. The most memorable part for me was his account of his life in California, beginning in 1964, which was always bright and sunny, and which was making him extremely happy. I drank it all in. I was in the first year of an English degree at Hendon College. I was by now delighting in the experiences of life in London which was so ...