‘This is what I see,” David Hockney says, sitting across the table from me, his arms spread out wide and an as yet unlit cigarette held in his left hand. “I can see you clearly, William,” he says, staring at me. Then he wiggles his wrists. “And I can sort of see my hands. But how do you paint that?” He’s talking about one of his constant artistic obsessions: how to paint and depict the way we actually see the world.
We are sitting across an oval table in the living quarters of his studio complex in Kensington, London. The room is large and busy with clutter. A parquet floor, and a kitchen/dining/sitting area that is generously spacious with a minstrel’s gallery and a fair
