Hockney returns to roots with Yorkshire landscapes

He made his name painting sun-filled canvases depicting his adopted home of California. But at the age of 69, David Hockney has returned to record the landscapes of his native Yorkshire.

In a sequence started last year, the artist of that Sixties icon, The Bigger Splash, has been painting the changing seasons of the Wolds near his home in Bridlington.

Working outside regardless of the weather, Hockney has produced 25 new paintings which are going on show at the Annely Juda gallery, London, in his first exhibition of oils in Britain for nearly a decade. The show includes two impressive six-part canvases two by four metres in size, which he has combined to make one work.

"To draw from nature on this scale was thrilling and, I realised, new," he says in the exhibition catalogue. "It could not work with one canvas 12 foot by six foot... I would have had trouble painting in the middle of a canvas that size while still being able to see the landscape as well. With six separate ones, I could take some away for a while and still keep the whole picture in my head."

David Hockney: A Year in Yorkshire opens tomorrow and runs until 28 October