David Hockney: Painting and Photography opens at L.A. Louver this Wednesday, July 15, 6-8 pm. All of the 36 works on view were created over the past two years in the artist’s Los Angeles studio. As the Hockney prepared for the exhibition, the Los Angeles Times visited his studio in the Hollywood Hills and gave readers insight into his latest body of work and his recent return to Los Angeles. 

Back in the California sunshine he popularized in paint, he has created his own parallel universe, bringing the outside in by inviting painting, photography and film subjects to perform for his camera or sit for portraits.

He’d begun widening his studio guest list before he left Bridlington, where visitors included jugglers whom he immortalized in a short multi-camera video later shown at LACMA and elsewhere. Last summer, invitations went to dancers who gave him a sense of dance and movement as he created a circle painting in homage to Henri Matisse’s “The Dance” (La Danse).

The most ambitious of his studio work these days is his ongoing portrait project. Begun last year, it has already involved individual visits by dozens of people, who come to the studio to be painted. Most are members of an eclectic group of friends and staff, a de facto acting company that has appeared in many of his earlier portraits and photos.

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IMAGE: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times