AN official David Hockney Trail allowing visitors to Yorkshire to walk in the footsteps of Britain’s most famous living artist will take in such places as Warter, Thixendale and Sledmere.
The county-wide trail is currently being put together by Mr Hockney and Welcome to Yorkshire, the county’s tourism agency.
It will take in Warter, Thixendale and Sledmere and coincide with the opening of David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture which opens at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in January .
The bulk of new work for the exhibition will feature Bradford-born Hockney’s landscape paintings of East Yorkshire and particularly the Yorkshire Wolds, which will put the area on the map for art lovers and tourists alike.
Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said: “It is very early stages but we are very excited to be working with David Hockney on a new trail. We believe there will be massive global interest in Yorkshire following his Royal Academy show so we are working with him to identify sites that will satisfy the public’s curiosity in his work but also not impose on his privacy.
“Locations in the trail so far will include the villages of Warter, Thixendale and Sledmere as well as Salts Mills and Bradford, plus various sites in the Wolds which will be the undoubted star of the show when the exhibition opens in January.”
Hockney’s Yorkshire spans the width of the county. He was born and studied art in Bradford and Salts Mill in Saltaire still houses one of the finest collections of his work in the world, one he constantly adds to and updates. The Yorkshire Wolds are the inspiration for many of The Bigger Picture paintings with locations such as Garrowby Hill, Kilham, Thixendale and Woldgate Woods on display. While the Yorkshire coast, where he now lives, is the subject matter for a series of films, also to be shown for the first time, revealing his relationship with the landscape around his Bridlington home.
Hockney, who splits his time between Bridlington and California, will be only the second Royal Academician to occupy the Main Galleries of the Royal Academy in his lifetime.
His stellar reputation was established while he was still a student; his work was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries, which heralded the birth of British Pop Art. He visited Los Angeles in the early 1960s and settled there soon after.
He is also closely associated with southern California and has produced a large body of work there over many decades.