Sunflower (Paper Pool I)

When Hockney left England for America in 1978 he initially stayed in New York and visited Ken Tyler’s graphic workshop at Bedford Village. Tyler showed him the technique of pressed colour paper pulp pictures. Combining painting and print making, liquid colour pulp is poured into metal moulds onto a surface of wet paper. Coloured dyes and more pulp can be added which is then heavily pressed so that once dry the paper and pigments become completely fused. The present work is from the first series that Hockney did using this method and the subject matter may well be a reference to van Gogh, an artist he much admired. He went on to do the famous swimming pool series using this pressed paper technique, taking Tyler’s own swimming pool as inspiration.