This site is Free & Ad-Free!
If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
Other ways to support it at the end. Thank you!
Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.
3:40 am, October 20, 2026, Northwell Greenwich Village Hospital, NYC.
I can’t say I thought of myself as a big “fan” of David Hockney’s while he lived, yet as I assess his multifarious & manifold achievements after his passing on June 11th, I realize he had his own way of making me one. His Art, his books, his gallery & museum shows, documentaries, interviews & thoughts on other Artists, and on and on have this way of surrounding you like a cobra. If you live in this time, you simply cannot escape David Hockney.
I don’t see many people complaining about it.
I’ve come to terms with it. Hell, I’ve come to greatly, and somewhat secretly, admire the man for his astounding and criminally under-appreciated Photography, his ground-breaking classic book, Secret Knowledge, perhaps the most important Art history book published so far this century, his endlessly fascinating, and equally ground-breaking, iPhone, and then, iPad Drawings & Paintings. But all of these pale in comparison with the most special gift he’s given me-
Spring.
David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, Royal Academy of Arts, 2021. Inside Mr. Hockney captures the arrival in day-by=day freeze frame iPad Paintings to stunning effect.
David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, Royal Academy of Arts, 2021, was the book that got me to open my eyes and finally see nature & Spring. After I announced I was taking a break from Art writing in September, 2025 to focus on surviving, I got back to drawing (small “d” in my case), which I hadn’t done since I started writing for this site full-time. My subsequent pieces on Hilma af Klint’s Flower Watercolors & C.J. Hendry’s Flower Draawings (my most-read piece to date), were born then as a result, too, as was a deepening of my studies of Georgia O’Keeffe, long one of my favorites.
Kenn Sava, East 17th Street Tulip, 2025. Colored Pencil on Bristol. From my photo, drawn freehand.
No matter the state of the country, the world, or my own life, as I lie here in Northwell’s Greenwich Village Hospital early one October Tuesday morning wrestling with the most serious illness of my life, I’m reminded of something David Hockney was fond of saying, almost like a mantra, or like a shield against everything else-
Conservatory Garden, Central Park, NYC, April 29, 2025
Maybe it’s my illness or exhaustion talking, but right now it seems to me that inside of those words just may be David Hockney’s greatest message of all.
*- Soundtrack for this piece is “It Might As Well Be Spring,” by Richard Rogers & Oscar Hammerstein II and performed by Frank Sinatra-
For L. & Fluff.
NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.
You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.
Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new pieces below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.