Pear

in ‘fruit in a chinese bowl’

   hockney’s pear is flat green

   easily mistaken for an avocado

 

to eat a pear for free

   knowing it tastes three million

   english pounds is our own business

 

banksy has a pair of nostrils

   for detecting things on the nose

   but is not known for painting pears

 

while arcimboldo’s noisy fruttivendolo

   has a pear for a nose

   and a face we could munch for lunch

 

and nothing much touches

   the most famous pears of cézanne

   square there teasing our primal instincts

 

 

i.m. David Hockney 11th of June 2026

 

 

 

 

 

Yorkshire (January)

Not Yorkshire: green clouds, magenta lanes, vermilion creeper, azure mud, pink pasture, purple saplings, yellow shadows. But yet Yorkshire: spindled treetops, jumping raindrops, daffodil parties, horse crossings, white birdcalls, parked cars, red-bluff buildings, glass ashtrays. Yorkshire via California: LSD buses, orange groves, coasting freeways, surf sunlight, technology plug-ins, loudest cactus, mass deluxe production seduction, silicon schmilicon Spike Milligan! Yorkshire of desire: that lane travelled so often through woods, where now you sit down by, old man, to paint and contemplate. Yorkshire in memoriam: ipad drawing printed on sheets of paper mounted by Dibond Hockney circa after January sometime twenty eleven.

Zoom (January)

Zoom in to hedgerow muzzy birch stripe sky tip-bucket foliage froth road wash before dot leaves rib shadows insert overleaf intersperse collective recognition each branch crosshatch puddle roadside grasses innuendo become statement heaped hemmed zigzag incidental ipad action eye blurred heights cloud-like ground selected bright palette scribble blink press gauze. Then zoom out paintbox crush push blossoms past January white snow botanical entertainment poised plush scarlet ribbons of lightsome purple reflections of raincloud focus faithful feigning energy undiminished Hockney’s earlybird weeds tossing outlining bursting hooded weeds starjump butterfly weeds old man’s weeds laughing day-old weeds touch the screen save send.

Hibiscus (September)

On iPad David Hockney draws in colour every morning a flower. Touch the screen and usual forms take animated shape. Thumb and forefinger direct vermilion shadow behind bending pink petals. Brushes app, a paintbox of pixels, supplies bright yellow outlines, more California than Yorkshire. Stylus styles a cut glass vase from dozens of white jabs. It’s a ‘painting’ smoother than any canvas, outside it might be September somewhere. Then David Hockney lines it up and iPhones the flower to his e-list. Facebook, even. It pulses in a darkened gallery near you, or on your screen, like a work of nature.

Hockney (July)

 David Hockney’s ‘Tullamarine Terminal’ proves he did little else during his July stopover than take polaroids. Waiting for a plane, he plays with planes: it’s one of his bigger joiners. Snaps of kingsize duty-free alcohol segue into wheelie luggage, both feet on the ground. Cubism goes rampant with corridor marble. Gate signs multiply to five dimensions, as if we go through time barriers. Barriers themselves are thicket mazes of Border Force, one photograph turning the word by trick angle to Farce. Time stands still when we notice in a glossy wee frame far corner, the luminous nose of an airbus.