David Hockney, one of the most influential artists of the modern era, my idol, known for redefining figurative painting through his vibrant use of color, light and everyday subjects, passed away at the age of 88 on June 11, 2026, at his studio in London. His passing marks not only the loss of a remarkable artist but also the end of a unique vision that changed how we see the world.

Born in Bradford, U.K., in 1937, David Hockney emerged as one of the leading figures of the pop art movement after studying at the Royal College of Art in London. Although initially associated with British Pop Art, his career quickly transcended stylistic labels, encompassing painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, stage design and later digital media. From his iconic Californian swimming pool paintings of the 1960s to his monumental Yorkshire landscapes and groundbreaking experiments with photography and the iPad, Hockney consistently challenged conventional ways of seeing. Widely regarded as one of the most influential and expensive living artists of his generation, he spent more than six decades redefining the relationship between observation, perception and representation in contemporary art.

His passing is undoubtedly a loss for contemporary art, but what the art world is truly mourning is not simply the disappearance of a painter. We are mourning the departure of one of the last great advocates of wonder. An artist who spent more than six decades reminding us that seeing is neither automatic nor passive, but rather one of the most profound creative acts available to human beings.

The news of his death reached me thousands of miles away from the London streets where I first encountered his work as a young painting student. Yet it was impossible not to return, at least mentally, to those years. London remains one of the world’s great artistic capitals not merely because of its museums, galleries and institutions, but because it teaches artists how to look. Looking, after all, is the beginning of everything.

When I moved to London to pursue my master’s degree in painting, I arrived carrying the ambitions, insecurities and romantic expectations familiar to many artists who find themselves in a city that has shaped generations of creative minds before them. I expected to learn about composition, technique, contemporary theory and the mechanics of navigating the art world. What I did not expect was that one of the most important lessons would arrive through an encounter with an artist whose work, at first glance, seemed radically different from my own. Hockney painted swimming pools; I painted memories.

I found myself drawn toward symbolism, collective memory, diplomacy, peace and the emotional lives of objects, while he painted the sun shining over the sea or that is what I initially thought. Only later did I understand that beneath the obvious visual differences, we were asking remarkably similar questions.

I then realized what fascinated me was not the famous swimming pools, nor the dazzling colors, nor even the technical brilliance that made Hockney one of the most recognizable artists of the 20th century. It was something much simpler and infinitely more profound. Hockney looked at the world with the same curiosity that a child reserves for discovering something for the very first time and that attitude transformed everything.

Suddenly, a chair was no longer merely a chair, a road was no longer merely a road, a tree was no longer merely a tree; an object became a repository of presence, a landscape became a living conversation, a photograph became a question rather than an answer.

For an artist whose own practice would later evolve into projects such as "The Innocence of Objects," this realization was transformative.

"The Innocence of Objects" emerged from my fascination with everyday things that quietly accompany our lives while remaining almost invisible to us. A tea glass, a ferry life buoy, a coffee cup, a simit, a child’s toy, a bird carved from wood or an ordinary household object may appear insignificant when viewed in isolation, yet each carries fragments of memory, culture, belonging and personal history. Objects witness our lives without judgment. They absorb our joys and sorrows. They remain when moments pass.

My title of the series itself was born from this observation. Objects are innocent; human beings project stories onto them, memory settles upon them, history passes through them.

Years after my student days in London, I realized that this belief was not entirely unrelated to Hockney’s artistic philosophy. His subject was never the swimming pool. It was never the landscape. It was never even the person sitting for a portrait. His subject was attention.

And attention, when practiced sincerely, becomes a form of love. This may be why his work has remained so enduringly relevant in an age increasingly defined by distraction.

We live in a culture that consumes images at extraordinary speed. Photographs appear and disappear within seconds. Digital platforms reward immediacy rather than contemplation. Artificial intelligence now generates visual worlds faster than any human hand could possibly produce them. Yet despite being surrounded by images, genuine observation has become increasingly rare: we see more. Yet we notice less.

And David Hockney spent his entire career resisting this condition. His paintings insist upon duration. They ask us to slow down and then look once more.

The more I studied his work, the more I came to understand that Hockney’s greatest contribution was not stylistic but philosophical. He challenged one of the central assumptions of Western visual culture: the belief that reality can be understood through a single perspective.

For centuries, artists had been taught to construct the world through fixed viewpoints. Hockney questioned this tradition with extraordinary persistence. Human experience, he argued, is never static. We move through space. Memory interrupts perception. Time alters understanding. The eye itself never stops wandering. Reality is fluid.

Why should art pretend otherwise?

His celebrated photographic collages, assembled from dozens or even hundreds of individual images, reflected this conviction. Long before digital culture fragmented our understanding of time and space, Hockney had already begun constructing visual experiences that resembled memory itself more than conventional representation. This was not merely an aesthetic innovation. It was a philosophical statement.

And perhaps this is where I felt closest to him.

Much of my own work, whether through painting, installation, video or public interventions such as "I Declare Peace," has been driven by a similar desire to move beyond singular narratives. A declaration of peace is, in many ways, an attempt to imagine another perspective. The flock of birds recurring throughout my practice represents coexistence. The carousel frozen in time explores memory. The innocent objects that populate my canvases speak about collective histories hidden within ordinary forms.

Different visual language but similar aspiration, both practices, in their own ways, seek to expand perception.

What I admired most about Hockney was that he never allowed age to diminish his curiosity. Many artists spend their careers searching for a recognizable signature and then spend the remainder of their lives repeating it. Hockney chose a different path. He approached every technological development not with suspicion but with enthusiasm. He embraced photography, video, digital drawing and eventually the iPad, not because he wished to appear contemporary, but because he genuinely remained interested in discovering new ways of seeing. That distinction matters.

There is a profound difference between chasing novelty and remaining curious.

Novelty seeks attention while curiosity seeks understanding. David Hockney was curious until the very end.

In this respect, he offered a powerful lesson not only for artists but for all of us.

Creativity is not youth; it is the level of your attention, your willingness to remain surprised by the world, the refusal to allow familiarity to become blindness.

This lesson has accompanied me long after my London years ended. Whenever I begin a new body of work, I find myself returning to a simple question that Hockney’s practice seems to ask repeatedly: Have I really looked closely enough?

The question appears deceptively simple.

Yet it contains an entire philosophy. Have I truly seen this object? This city? This memory? This person? This landscape? Or have I merely recognized it?

The difference between seeing and recognizing may be where art begins.

As the international art world reflects upon David Hockney’s remarkable life, there will be countless discussions about his contribution to painting, photography, digital art and visual culture. Historians will evaluate his influence. Museums will organize tributes. Collectors will revisit masterpieces. Critics will debate his place within the broader narrative of twentieth and 21st-century art.

All of these conversations are necessary.

Yet when I think of David Hockney today, I find myself remembering something far more personal. I remember a young artist walking through London, trying to understand what kind of artist she wished to become.

I remember encountering a body of work that quietly suggested that artistic greatness does not emerge from complexity alone, but from attention; I remember recognizing, perhaps for the first time, that optimism can possess intellectual depth, that beauty can be serious and that looking carefully at the world remains a radical act.

Most of all, I remember understanding that art is not always about transforming reality.

Sometimes it is about teaching us how to see it.

David Hockney did exactly that.

He taught generations of artists that vision is not a mechanical function of the eye but an ethical and imaginative practice. He taught us that curiosity matters more than certainty, that experimentation matters more than repetition and that wonder remains available to those willing to preserve it.

For me, his legacy will always live not only in museums or art history books, but also in every object that quietly waits to be noticed, every memory hidden inside an ordinary form and every attempt to create work that invites viewers to slow down and look again.

Because in the end, David Hockney’s greatest masterpiece may not have been a painting at all.

It may have been the simple and increasingly rare conviction that the world, despite everything, remains worthy of our attention.