Floodlights and Goalposts

An online commonplace book

Has fate been cancelled?

I know I’m eight-two, but I feel thirty in the studio when I get going. I stand up to paint. I stand up to work, mostly. Sitting down is supposed to be bad for you, but everything is supposed to be bad for you. I just ignore it. My mother lived to be ninety-eight. You have to be very tough to live that long. I remember telling her over the tea table that Diana, the Princess of Wales, had been killed in a car accident. She said, ‘That’s very sad!’ Then she said, ‘Do you think there’s another cup in that pot?’ Fate has not been cancelled, has it?

– David Hockney

A surprising response from Hockney’s mother. Spring Cannot be Cancelled continues to surprise and delight. It’s an excellent dip from passage-to-passage book.

Gayford, Martin, and Hockney, David. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy. United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson, 2021. pp80


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