David Hockney moon i-Pad drawings
Once, when we were just sitting outside the house, we put all the lights off in the house to see the moonlight more clearly. The moon could then be seen to cast shadows of the trees on the grass, so with my backlit iPad I could draw it. This would have been virtually impossible without it. – David Hockney
In the spring of 2020, David Hockney was inspired by the sight of an unusually large moon—a supermoon, occurring when the moon is closest to Earth. Recalling the moment, the artist reflected on the challenge of capturing the experience through photography, emphasizing drawing’s unique ability to convey the intensity of perception.
“I was looking at the moon for quite a while, and when you do that, you see this halo around it that you don’t see in photographs at all because it’s too far,” Hockney is quoted in in Martin Gayford, “Spring Cannot be Canceled: David Hockney in Normandy” (London: Thames & Hudson, 2021), p. 156-157. “That’s an example of the way lenses push things away. In a lens view, it would be disappointingly small… My niece said that she tried to photograph a big moon, and I said, ‘Well, no, you have to draw it, like the sunrise. It can’t be photographed because it is the source of light.’”
GRAY presents “David Hockney: The Moon Room” opening in the gallery’s Chicago location on July 10, 2026. The exhibition centers on a recently released series focused on the artist’s observations of the moon. Created in 2020 at his Normandy studio in France, Hockney used his iPad to make daily paintings of the surrounding landscape, working en plein air to capture the changing seasons as illuminated by moonlight.
Hockney turned to the iPad for its immediacy and responsiveness, a medium that bridges the disciplines of painting and drawing while accommodating the spontaneity of working outdoors, especially in the dark. The exhibition will remain on view through August 22, 2026. This is Hockney’s sixteenth exhibition with GRAY.
Throughout his career, Hockney has consistently engaged with new technologies, particularly those designed for widespread use and accessibility. From his early experiments with Polaroid cameras, photocopiers, and fax machines to his pioneering use of digital tools such as the Macintosh computer and Photoshop, his practice has continually evolved alongside technological innovation. Since 2009, the iPhone and iPad have become central to his work, enabling an expansive body of digital drawings and paintings. Introduced in 2010, the iPad, in particular, afforded the artist greater scale and precision, while its playback function reveals the temporal unfolding of each composition, offering insight into the process of its making.
“The Moon Room” was first presented by Florence Calame-Levert in David Hockney: Normandism, presented from March 3 through September 22, 2024, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen in Normandy, France.
David Hockney died June 11, 2026, in London.
ABOUT DAVID HOCKNEY
David Hockney (b. 1937, Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK) is considered one of the most influential and defining figures in contemporary art. His seven-decade career and prolific oeuvre is characterized by formal invention, an intellectual inquiry into the nature of depiction and perspective, and a sustained commitment to celebrating and portraying the world around him.
Hockney’s formal training began at the Bradford School of Art (1953–57), followed by the Royal College of Art in London (1959–62), where he graduated with a Gold Medal distinction and subsequently emerged as one of the seminal talents in the new generation of British artists.
The 1960s saw a pivotal shift in the development of Hockney’s distinct artistic style, away from early experiments with abstract expressionism to figuration and linear mark making, particularly following his move from London to Los Angeles in 1964, where he began documenting the city’s seductive charm from the position of an outsider. This new environment inspired his iconic renderings of the Southern Californian lifestyle (Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966) and the celebrated swimming pool series (A Bigger Splash, 1967) which became widely acclaimed as canonical works. His subject matter frequently explored themes of romantic and sexual intimacy, often leading to large-scale double portraits (Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968; Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1971) as well as the naturalistic style Hockney adopted by utilizing photography as a preparatory medium (Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972), which he soon considered too reliant on photorealism.
From the late 1990s into the early 2000s, Hockney expanded his practice into the study of art-historical technique, focusing particularly on the optical devices employed by Western artists from the fifteenth century onward. Approaching the subject not only as a scholar but as a master practitioner deeply versed in the physical processes of image-making, Hockney brought a rare technical insight to the analysis of historical works.
His ability to critically assess draftsmanship, perspective, light, and mark-making from the perspective of an artist allowed him to identify visual evidence that had often escaped conventional academic interpretation. These investigations culminated in his influential publication Secret Knowledge (2001), which set out a comprehensive theoretical framework concerning the use of optical aids by the Old Masters and further established his significant contribution to the field of art history.
From painting, drawing, printmaking, set design, and photography to evolving media ranging from fax machines to iPads, Hockney synthesizes exceptional draftsmanship with keen observation, a sophisticated understanding of art history coupled with an embrace of modern technology. David Hockney’s enduring oeuvre reflects his underlying enthusiasm for life and investigative curiosity encapsulated by his signature phrase, “Love Life.”
