There will be hundreds if not thousands of obituaries on David Hockney this weekend, who died at the age of 88 on Thursday. He deserves them. He was one of the last great painters of the last century, perhaps the most famous painter in the world. And he was more than that. He changed the way we saw things. He is a Da Vinci, a Carvaggio, a monumental figure tha defined the word art. Hockney was Yorkshire born, became a Los Angeles icon, then returned to the French and English countryside. He lived a life of art. He followed the ligtht.

About a year ago, when I was at my girlfriend’s family home in Cumbria, right next to Yorkshire, her father gave me David Hockney’s book of observations on Old Masters, Secret Knowledge, which I read as a sort of love letter to good writing and great art. And great skill. I was drawn always to the way Hockney made his films and took photos, the way he changed perception by sharpening it, but not missing angles, but capturing time as it moved past you, or in some cases, through you. His portraits of friends and peers felt like that, but his paintings of the seasons, his films of the countryside, were revelatory because they reminded us of how much was just right outsider your door, how much light there was, and texture, and we hadn’t quite captured it all just yet. His iPad paintings felt like a relentless pursuit of this idea, too, but also an artist who wanted to understand all image-making techniques and never miss a chance to make something with his hands and his mind.

I think that will always be my lasting memory of David Hockney. On stage at the de Young Museum in San Francisco for the opening of his David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition in 2013, the moderator asked David a sort of off the cuff question about giving his time to the audience and David said he much rather be painting. As if any moment he wasn’t drawing, painting, photographing, filming or on his iPad was a lost moment to give himself to the craft. Time should never be wasted. There is always more light to discover. —Evan Pricco

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