Rick Janson Art Studio

I finished reading the Taschen book about David Hockney about a week before the artist passed June 11. The book, and by extension Hockney’s career, energized me in ways I didn’t expect.

I had planned for some time to do another self-portrait, this one a more considered effort after several small studies done in 2025. I was also following a call for entry for self-portraits at a gallery I have previously exhibited with in Toronto and was looking to do something a bit more imaginative this time out. Hence why the others were labelled as studies.

For this self-portrait I quickly thought it would be interesting to do my own nod to the master, not necessarily painting in his style, but doing my own riff on one of his best known paintings, 1972’s Portrait Of An Artist (Pool With Two Figures). After all, I did have a pool, and while I live in the burbs, the summer light at times can be reminiscent of Hockney’s California.

I started off setting up my iPhone on a tripod to do several selfies, making adjustments to get myself in the foreground and show plenty of pool. Compositionally, I realized I likely had to take a couple of steps into the pool for it to work, hence why I was getting my feet wet both literally and figuratively. The morning light was very angular. I liked the way it illuminated the shed in the background — or what I like to call the art hut (its where I normally paint). Whereas the blue California skies were an important part of Hockney’s work at the time, I wanted to box in the image, utilizing a screen of trees beyond the shed and the fence. No blue skies, although the real-life scene would have included several patches of blue along that line. Not this time. Like Hockney, I felt it important to simplify the background, which took incredible restraint on my part given my penchant for detail. You might say I like to show the work in my pictures. That included reducing my back garden to grass and a shadow fence — normally there are many shrubs, plants and a pond back there along the property line.

The other question emerged was, what about the swimmer? About a week earlier our grandkids had been out for a few days, and with this in mind, I had taken a number of pictures of them underwater. The trick was to find the right place to insert the swimmer to make it look right. In the Hockney painting, the swimmer is moving towards the figure. In my tongue in cheek, he’s swimming away from me.

With a deadline of August 3rd for the Call for Entry, I abandoned my usual process of rotating my canvases as I worked on them. Given the size, I knew I would have to go all out on it to finish on deadline. I did find myself going a little judgment blind on this as a result, trusting my instincts that it would play out. When I finally started posting images of it on social media, the feedback seemed to vindicate my efforts. Phew! I appreciated the thumbs up particularly on the Hockney fan FB site.

One person wondered if the water would evolve to look like Hockney’s pools. That would have been so much easier, and I did think about it for a long time, but I decided that the clash of styles might not entirely work out. Instead I had to carefully observe the pool itself and figure out how to approach it in paint. That was likely the most difficult part of the process, spending more time than usual mixing the right colour of aqua. I had painted water many times before, but a pool presents very differently than say a lake or a river. The other things is, our pool is not that wide, and compositionally I didn’t want the far side wall and coping of the pool to show. So my pool got bigger on my canvas, giving me more room to plant my fleeing swimmer too.

But what’s with the hat? A few weeks beforehand I had some sun damage removed by my doctor from the top of my head. I forget that my hair is not quite as thick on top as it was in my younger days. As usual, my response was overboard, ordering a significant number of hats in a variety of styles to keep my head covered. Given I was going portray myself in full sunshine, the cap brim did present some challenges around how much of my eyes you were going to see. It likely meant a little less squinting too. Happily, I think it worked.

The painting will be on view at the Leslie Grove Gallery as part of the This Is Me Show (August 19-30). Official opening is Thursday, August 20th from 6-8 pm. The Leslie Grove Gallery is located at 1158 Queen St. E (corner of Jones) in the Leslie Grove Park. Normal gallery hours are 12 Noon to 5 pm, Wednesdays to Sundays.

Meanwhile, tentatively I’m planning on hitting the road next week, travelling first to Ottawa, through Quebec to New Brunswick, and briefly dipping our toes in the Nova Scotia surf. When I get back there are a series of paintings that are not far from completion and should appear in this space. If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe — its a lot easier that checking back to see if I have posted anything new yet. Subscriptions, of course, are free.