Hockney completes his most ambitious project yet

About a month ago, David Hockney hauled the 50 canvases that make up his largest-ever artwork into a van and drove to a large barn near his studio in Bridlington.

There, against the wall, he assembled his latest and most ambitious composition, a 40ft-wide and 15ft-high tribute to the beauty of the East Yorkshire landscape. Painted in the open air, it was too large to assemble indoors in his modest studio.

Venues do not come much more spacious than the Royal Academy of Arts however. And yesterday Hockney was standing in front of his composition again, this time in London.

Bigger Trees near Water or/ou Peinture en Plein Air pour l'age Post-Photographique, is the largest single work that the RA has ever hung.

"When we took it to the barn and put it up against the wall, it was exciting, exhilarating," Hockney said at the unveiling. "The most I had seen of it until then was 10 pieces at a time. The moment we got it up I was very thrilled. I immediately started realising what I could do in the future," he said.

The career of Hockney, who is often described as the father of the British pop art movement and regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, has spanned five decades and resulted in works that reside in galleries around the world.

Speaking to The Independent, he said it was this latest work, which will sit at the heart of the RA's Summer Exhibition, that he views as his "most ambitious undertaking" in painting.

He had wanted to create a large-scale work for some time, but the moment he conceptualised the technical method needed to bring it to life, he was completely absorbed by the idea.

"The scene was one I had been brewing over for a year. I phoned the Royal Academy and asked them, 'could you give me the big wall if I make a picture to fit it?'

"That was at the end of February. I realised I could do something of this scale by putting canvases together. I didn't need a ladder to do it, or 10 people.

"Once I had had the idea I couldn't stop until I finished it. We were working on it almost non-stop for about five weeks. We were high on the adrenaline, it's so exciting when you know you're creating something new, you feel the energy. I felt I started running up the stairs again and smoking cigarettes."

He pinpointed the forest some time ago, after chancing upon a particularly "baroque" tree in one of his scouting sessions in East Yorkshire, and painted most of the 50 canvases on location. "We would drive out and I would set everything up in the open. Thankfully, we only had one day of rain. It was a very big picture to do, admitting you could only see one fifth at a time," he said.

Each night, he viewed the painting on a computer as it came together. While the process was highly demanding - the urgency came from a need to capture the scene before any seasonal changes altered the picture - he said he was inspired to produce other works of the same scale, "now that I know I can".

The lengthy painting process was recorded and will be released as a film offering an insight into how the groundbreaking work came together.

Born in Bradford in 1937, Hockney has kept a base in Los Angeles since the 60s, but now feels a creative urge to dramatise the landscape of his youth, in watercolours at first, and now in oils. "I'm led by my instincts. My sister and mother were in Bridlington and it's a part of the world I knew very well.

"It's turned out to be the perfect place for me at the moment. It's isolated and no one from London can come in a day. At my age, I want to devote a lot of time to painting and you need to get rid of the everyday crap to do that.

"London is nice but it has too many diversions, even more than Los Angeles. In Bridlington, I can live privately. Sometimes a week goes by and I don't leave the house," he said.

Increasing deafness may also be a factor in Hockney's growing desire for solitude. He now wears two hearing aids, so former pastimes such as visits to the opera have been replaced by new ones. "I now read a lot and I ponder things. It's interesting because the deafness gives you a lot of power and confidence."

Hockney's work forms part of the 239th Summer Exhibition, which opens on 11 June.

The picture of David Hockney

* July 1937: Born in Bradford. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and studied lithography at Bradford College of Art

* 1959: Attends Royal College of Art in London, where in 1961 his work featured in the exhibition, Young Contemporaries, alongside Peter Blake, announcing the arrival of British Pop Art

* 1964: Settles in Los Angeles, after success in New York, and creates the famous series of Swimming Pool paintings

* October 2006: the National Portrait Gallery in London organises one of the largest displays of Hockney's portraiture, one of the most successful exhibitions in the gallery's history

* June 2007: Hockney co-curates an exhibition of Turner's watercolours and five of his new landscape works: David Hockney: The East Yorkshire Landscape, both to open at Tate Britain