David Hockney’s ‘My parents’

I painted this one nearly 50 years back.
A simple picture; a familiar scene,

Aged people sharing their reality.
And yet you still ask me to describe it.

I’ve said it’s an uncomplicated affair, plain to see.
I see Father, head buried in a book, I see Mother, poised;

But that was then.

And now you ask, what do I see now?
Now,
I see the space between my parents
betrays my absence,
filled as it is by natural beauty, honest endeavour and earnest virtue.
I glimpse sacrifice and austerity and a strength of purpose;
I share a regard, but feel estranged.
It was a scene of timeless domestic fortitude
and in response
I laid my Chardin down in the reflection of their della Francesa
and stepped out of the frame
and into LA.