Staged in interview, Hockney speaks in snippets about his pieces while the documentary forms a video collage around him, reflecting Hockney’s multi-frame landscapes awash with bright colours and bold mark-marking reminiscent of impressionism, pointillism, and a splash of Van Gogh. Through marks, Hockney reveals, the landscape’s language can take shape.

Landscape to landscape, threads of time, change, and memory emerge. Hockney was fascinated in capturing the same scene in different seasons—both in paint and through video—with scenes often beginning in winter to understand the depth of seasonal change throughout the year. There is a fascinating contrast between the classical inspiration Hockney draws from Rembrandt’s 17th century landscapes, while also experimenting with contemporary digital techniques using an iPad.

In less than four years, Hockney then jumps from the great expanse of Yorkshire landscapes to intimate portraiture in his LA studio. Cooling from vivid greens to bold blues, each of Hockney’s 82 portraits (not to forget the one still life) were painted over 3 days—a strict deadline that the artist never crossed while capturing the transient individuals drifting in and out of his studio.

Expressions had to be neutral; one you don’t usually see yourself. Rather than reflecting the earthy realism of Lucien Freud portraiture, Hockney leant into Matisse’s use of expressive colour to capture emotion in acrylic, whereby perfecting each likeness, or looking perfect for the artist, became unimportant.