Drawing has always played a central role in David Hockney’s artistic practice—from his early years at Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art to his more recent works created on an iPad in France. Drawing is where Hockney feels most immediate, whether using pencil, pen and ink, coloured crayon, or digital tools. His choice of medium has garnered significant attention, particularly in exhibitions like Love Life, which explores his drawings from 1963 to 1977, showcased at The Holburne Museum in Bath in 2022.

While many artists see drawing as a preparatory step toward painting, involving multiple revisions and refinements, Hockney’s approach is different. For him, drawing is an immediate act of discovery—an intuitive exploration in which he directly engages with his subject, allowing for spontaneous expression and insight. His drawings focus more on capturing moments of creative revelation than on perfecting or reworking an idea. This is especially evident in his early 1960s works, created just before and after his first visit to the United States. In this period, Hockney’s drawings are not simply studies for paintings, but fully realised expressions of his evolving vision. As curator Chris Stephens notes, Hockney’s drawings can be seen as "rehearsals for paintings" rather than mere precursors. A precursor is typically a rough draft leading to a final work, while a rehearsal is an active process of experimenting and refining ideas. Though Hockney’s drawings may influence future paintings, they stand as independent works in their own right, offering a space for discovery without the pressure of completion or finality.

During this time, Hockney remained committed to figuration. In 1963, he cheekily titled his first solo exhibition at Kasmin Gallery Pictures with People In, a playful critique of the growing trend toward abstraction in Britain. Many drawings from this period feature figures—often depictions of friends and lovers—set within expansive, imaginative landscapes. These works blend life drawing with images drawn from popular homoerotic bodybuilding magazines published in the United States, such as Physique Pictorial and Athletic Model Guild, introducing a more overtly sexual element compared to earlier works like We Two Boys Together Clinging, 1961.

Landscape and Man, 1963, created as a gift for Hockney’s close friend Bernard Nevill, is notable for its distinctive composition. The sheet of paper is divided vertically down the centre by a thin pencil line, creating two distinct halves. The left side is minimal, featuring only Hockney’s scrawled words: “landscape” and “man.” Beneath these words, he adds a dedication: “To Bernard from David. H. Dec. '63.” In contrast, the right half of the composition is filled with vibrant colour and figurative action. It is further divided horizontally into two sections. The upper section depicts a road stretching into the distance, evoking the ideal of the American Dream, aligning with the position of the word "landscape" on the left. Below it, the lower section shows a brightly coloured shower scene, where a male figure is captured mid-action in vibrant hues, corresponding with the word “man” on the left side. The incongruous nature of the two images stacked on top of one another creates a dreamlike sense of disjunction.

This drawing continues Hockney’s fascination with shower scenes, which began shortly after his graduation from the Royal College of Art. As he later recalled:

‘’For an artist the interest of showers is obvious: the whole body is always in view and in movement, usually gracefully, as the bather is caressing his own body. There is also a three-hundred-year tradition of the bather as a subject in painting. Beverly Hills houses seemed full of showers of all shapes and sizes ... They all seemed to me to have elements of luxury ... very un-English that!’’ 1

Hockney had installed a makeshift shower in his apartment, captivated by the flow of water, a theme that appears in works such as Domestic Scene, Los Angeles and the related Shower Study 2, both created in the same year as Landscape and Man. These works reveal Hockney’s growing sexual curiosity, spurred by the more open attitudes in America, which contrasted sharply with the repression and sexual persecution he experienced in Britain. In Landscape and Man, Hockney celebrates this newfound sexual liberation, embodying the hope and promise that he sought to explore further, both in his art and personal life.

1 Nikos Stangos (ed.), David Hockney by David Hockney, Thames and Hudson, London 1976, p99