David Hockney’s home studio is set deep in the Hollywood Hills. We drive there from Sunset Boulevard, past sweeping views of the canyon below, 1920s Art Deco homes and modernist glass boxes perched at intervals on the hillside.
The “English Angelino,” as he sometimes refers to himself, lives in a corner house off the main road, just where the hill flattens out. A verdant, anonymous compound behind high gray fences, it’s quiet, with no through traffic. With only a four-figure number on the door and a buzzer, there is no hint that this has, since 1979, been home to one of the world’s most recognizable and popular artists.
We are buzzed in and directed up a short path to Hockney’s studio, a building set aside from his home. From here, it is hard to make out his actual house, which is apparently a series of one- and two-story buildings – bungalows almost – enveloped in plants and shrubs. There are steps down, and somewhere tantalizingly out of sight is Hockney’s famous swimming pool, a recurring subject in his paintings.
