‘You should always paint what you love’

LAST year, when chatting on Face-Time, David Hockney happened to mention the late Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records and an old friend of his. Ertegun, Mr Hockney remarked, ‘was a very funny man’. ‘When someone asked him “where do you live normally?”, he answered: “I don’t live normally!”’

The same is true of the painter himself. He has not only led a most extraordinary life, but he’s still leading it right now in his mid eighties with flat-out energy and full creative power. If anything, Mr Hockney seems to become more prolific with age. On May 23 (all being well), a remarkable exhibition, ‘The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020’, will open at the Royal Academy (RA). It consists of the work he did last year during that beautiful spring, which was also the season when Covid-19 began to change our lives.

I visited Mr Hockney the summer before in 2019, a few months after he’d moved into his new house and studio in a rustic