A vast, brooding sky hangs over a landscape of barren earth and felled trees in Less Trees Near Warter. The dark red of the harvested forest starkly contrasts the lush green countryside of Hockney’s Yorkshire home county. One of the artist’s largest computer drawings, the grand scale and narrow format accentuate the immensity of the landscape. What once would have been a tranquil wilderness is interrupted by signs of man-made intervention – two naked country roads, criss-crossed with tire tracks, intersect the image and delineate an area of de-forestation. The rich, demanding red creates a gaping wound in the otherwise flourishing terrain, dictating a specific change in the landscape.
Less Trees Near Warter takes its name from a scene near the village of Warter, near Bridlington, where one of the artist’s residences is located. While based in Los Angeles, since the late 1970’s Hockney has continued to return to his native countryside to capture the local surrounds. Particularly interested in trees, Hockney has tracked their changes through the seasons with various series of works. This edition follows the artist’s largest ever work to date, Bigger Trees Near Warter (2007), which illustrates the trees surrounding Bridlington just before the arrival of spring, when tree leaves are starting to sprout. The fifty-panel composition was produced for the 2007 Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. For Bigger Trees Near Warter and the subsequent computer and iPad works, Hockney worked en-plein-air; this innovative method resulted in highly emotive imagery.
'[Trees] are the largest manifestation of the life-force we see. No two trees are the same, like us.'
—David Hockney