David Hockney review: when big is so beautiful

Occasionally, a lengthy fax would ribbon from the machine, buzzing over the Atlantic from an exotic American phone number. Boxes of champagne and other parcels would arrive, also from the US, sometimes directly from Fortnum and Masons. These were all sent from David Hockney to his relatives in the town. My mother, an amateur painter, would remark to me how strange it was that a world-famous artist, even one originally from Bradford, would be so deeply connected to such an unglamorous patch of northern England. Well, Hockney's own mother lived there, and so does he, now. Bridlington is not itself a pretty town, although that stretch of coastline has places of extreme natural beauty. But that area of the East Riding, while not as dramatic as the Moors or the Dales elsewhere in the county, has a gentle, agricultural loveliness to it. Hockney once took Death Valley and made it seem even more livid and strange than its mere rocks, chasms and precipices would appear, and he has performed the same alchemy on the often grey fields of Yorkshire. In A Bigger Picture, Hockney has rendered this land extraordinary, using scale, colour and intensity to picture a landscape that has undergone a kind of transfiguration.