"Landscapes are never boring": At 88, David Hockney shines with his paintings of the Normandy countryside

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Like small explosions of light to celebrate a simple everyday joy. Sunrise, or even almost childlike suns, signed David Hockney , 88 years old, a solar painter. Hockney knows summer, and it has always inspired him. Sixty years ago, the Briton discovered California and its swimming pools. Paintings that have become iconic and have made him the most expensive pop painter in the world.

" People think I spend my whole life by the pool, but I spend my life painting, " he said amusedly in 1999. But recently, he's had a change of scenery. Goodbye turquoise pools, hello to the meadows of the Normandy countryside.

In 2019, he bought an old half-timbered house. And here, he put down the easel and painted on a tablet. Technology became the sketchbook of this eternally curious man. And with the arrival of Covid, painting on the iPad took on its full meaning. Confined, he was able to send his drawings to his friends. Sunny landscapes, accompanied by a message of hope: " Don't forget, we can't cancel spring ."

Gloomy days, but the painter prefers to celebrate the arrival of spring. He has never been as productive as during lockdown. One landscape, 220 paintings. Even stuck at home, his superpower is to marvel at everything he sees around him. At 88, Hockney has kept his childlike eyes. " Landscapes are never boring because they are nature. It's only the representations we make of them that can be bland. You just have to do something different, and that's what I've tried to do all my life ," he explains.

A vision he shares with the entire world. Just after Covid, a Norman and digital sun illuminated New York, Tokyo, and London. Rays that invaded cities, like an invitation to take the time to contemplate the beauty of nature.