When David Hockney died in June of this year, he was described as Britain’s favourite artist, if not the greatest. Although as a young artist he had adopted Los Angeles as his artistic home, creating defining images of its swimming pools, blue skies and tanned bodies, he continued to return and paint his native Yorkshire. These later works replaced the subdued, muted tones normally associated with Britain, with his own intense vision of this landscape. About the presenter: Steven Miller is the former head of the National Art Archive at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He has worked in commercial and public galleries since the late 1980s and published widely on art. The book he co-authored on the first Australian blockbuster exhibition of modern European masters was short-listed for the Victorian Literary Prize and awarded the NSW Premier’s History Award in 2006. His publication Awakening: Four lives in art (2015) is an exploration of the creation of national identity through art. His light-hearted Dogs in Australian Art was recently republished in an expanded edition. He has a Masters degree in theology, as well as qualifications in art history and archives.
