(born 1937, British artist)

I first became aware of David Hockey, in 1975, when I saw an article about him in a national magazine. His subject matter caught my attention as I considered it close to my own. I have followed Hockey's work ever since.

David Hockey is a painter, illustrator, and draftsman with a worldwide reputation. His eclectic styles depict subject matter from his own life. In the early 1960's, Hockey's largely figurative work contained recurring expressionistic qualities using a wide variety of technical and stylistic devices.

In the middle 1960's, Hockey began to work increasingly from life and became interested in literal representation.

During the 1960's and 1970's, Hockey became very involved in portraiture. He gave hints to the sitter's character by depicting them in their normal environments in these mostly noncommissioned portraits. These were very carefully planned and organized portraits even though they appear to be 'snapshots' of life. His interest in representational art and depicting natural space and color increased with each work involving several preliminary drawings. He worked from photographs and real life.

As Hockey paints with acrylics, he paints in layers that modify rather than obscure the ones beneath. He works on both primed and unprimed canvas making use of the various textures. Hockey covers the final work with generous acrylic medium to give the painting a uniform smoothness of finish, often covering the change of texture where extensive reworking had been done.