'David Hockney did our portraits'

A couple who befriended David Hockney after a chance meeting have described the "privilege" of watching him create much-loved artworks.

Hockney, who died earlier this month, was living in Bridlington when he met historians David and Susan Neave at a concert in 2008.

"We went out with him in the countryside. He would show you how he painted. He always wanted to teach you something," Susan, 70, told the Hidden East Yorkshire podcast.

"We were very fortunate he did our portraits not long before he left Bridlington."

Susan added: "Because David [Hockney] wasn't so well, it was actually in his bedroom.

"The main thing is having to sit there in the same position and especially as it was more than one sitting.

"Although, when David did things like portraits, he always did them very quickly."

Hockney relocated from Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, to the East Yorkshire seaside resort in 2005, having spent many summers as a schoolboy in the area.

"We got to know him by chance really, we met him at a concert, but then we went regularly to his house," Susan said.

The couple, from Beverley, witnessed Hockney painting the monumental Bigger Trees Near Warter – which measured 40ft by 15ft (12m by 5m) across a grid of 50 individual canvases.

To accommodate the giant artwork, Hockney used a large warehouse on the outskirts of town as his studio.

"It was so big he ended up having a wheeled chair that he went around on," David Neave said.

The artist also filmed the changing seasons of the Yorkshire Wolds for a landmark video installation called The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods.

David Neave, 81, said Hockney would go out early in the morning in a custom-rigged vehicle, with multiple cameras mounted on the front, in order to film the trees as he drove along very slowly.

"He would do this every season," he added.

Susan said Hockney was inspired by the Yorkshire Wolds, but would rarely paint the sea, despite living on the coast.

"He was very passionate about his work, so that's what he wanted to talk about, he would just be totally focused on what he was doing at the time."

"He was very humorous, very easy to get on with and smoked all the time – something you had to put up with if you wanted to spend time with him.

"It was a great time, a great experience really, and very sad that he's died, but in a sense one can't be sad because he was nearly 89 and he lived the life he wanted to lead."

Hockney was born in Bradford but had family roots in East Yorkshire, according to the Neaves.

David Neave, who researched Hockney's family links to the area, said he was "thought of very much as a Bradford man, but his fairly near ancestors were in East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire".

As well as visiting the area as a school boy, Hockney also worked on a local farm near Huggate before starting at Bradford College of Art, he said.

"He used to say how he had his first alcoholic drink at the Wolds Inn at Huggate when he was a 16.

"He quite liked that because his father was strongly against alcohol, and also led campaigns in Bradford against smoking.

"He was the opposite to his father," he added. "No one else has smoked in our house but him."

According to David, Hockney also helped to put East Yorkshire on the map.

"Anybody who wanted to see him had to come to Bridlington," he added, "including his long-time friend Sir Paul McCartney".

Following Hockney's death, Sir Paul recalled visiting him in Bridlington in a post on social media.

The musician wrote: "He met us at the train station and drove us to his house in a smoke-filled car."

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