Artist David Hockney has died. Saddened by the news, I found myself disappearing down the Hockney rabbit hole. Somewhere along the way I heard about David Hockney’s bedside note, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
It was a little handwritten note that he apparently kept by his bed.
It read:
GET UP AND WORK IMMEDIATELY
I smiled when I heard this. No, I actually grinned! Then, over the next few days, I found myself thinking about it again. And again. Not because of what David Hockney’s bedside note said, but because it existed at all.
Why would the great David Hockney need a reminder to get to work?
If anyone seemed born to paint, surely it was Hockney.
Ever since I first encountered his work at an exhibition in Winnipeg, Manitoba in the early 1980s, he has seemed to me like an artist who simply had to make art. I remember looking longingly at one of the etchings at that show and wondering whether I could possibly afford it. I couldn’t. (How I wish I’d stretched my budget!)
Over the years, I’ve watched him move effortlessly—or so it seemed—from one body of work to another. Etchings. Swimming pools. Portraits. Yorkshire landscapes. Photographic collages. iPad drawings, Paintings in Normandy. Whatever caught his curiosity, he threw himself into it with astonishing energy.
Creating art always appeared to be the most natural thing in the world to him.
So why the note?
At first I assumed it was about motivation. Then I thought perhaps it was about protecting the morning. After all, the more successful and famous Hockney became, the more people must have wanted a piece of him. Emails. Phone calls. Interviews. Meetings. Visitors. Correspondence. Invitations. All the things that slowly nibble away at a day before you’ve even noticed.
Perhaps those five words simply meant: Paint first. Everything else can wait.
But the more I sat with it, another thought appeared.
Hockney made the note.
He put it where he would see it every morning. He understood himself well enough to design his life around doing what mattered most.
The note was helping him become himself, day after day.
I wrote recently about the strange contradiction of wanting to paint and yet somehow finding ourselves doing everything except painting. I’ve often wondered why it’s so hard to begin doing the very thing we long to do.
Perhaps David Hockney faced this same resistance.
Or perhaps he simply understood this:
Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves is to make the decision to paint before the excuses arrive.
And perhaps that’s why his bedside note wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t,
“Your painting is waiting.”
“Show Up”
“Just begin.”
It was a clear command.
GET UP AND WORK IMMEDIATELY
No negotiation.
No discussion.
No “when you feel ready.”
No “after you’ve checked your email.”
There’s something wonderfully decisive about it.
And here’s where it gets really interesting… I don’t think the command is harsh. I think it’s loving. It’s Hockney knowing exactly what Tomorrow Morning David needs to hear. We often think of self-compassion as being gentle. But sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves is remove the opportunity to dither.
The note says,
I’ve already made this decision for you.
It means Morning David doesn’t have a chance to debate. He simply gets on with it.
We tend to think that artists we admire possess an endless well of motivation, unshakeable discipline, some magical, inexhaustible drive that propels them into the studio every day. That they leap out of bed eager to begin. That somehow they have escaped the hesitation the rest of us feel.
But perhaps they haven’t.
Perhaps what separates them isn’t that they never hesitate.
Perhaps it’s that they build their lives in a way that makes beginning more likely.
Perhaps it’s one tiny, ordinary detail – five handwritten words by the bed – that makes action happen.
So what does the existence of David Hockney’s bedside note tell us? I do know that I’ve stopped seeing it as a motivation.
Instead, I see it as an act of self-knowledge. Hockney understood himself well enough to remove the daily debate. Somehow, that feels like a far more useful lesson than simply telling ourselves to “be disciplined.”
Life has a remarkable way of getting in the way of the thing we so care about – making art. Perhaps that’s why David Hockney wrote those five powerful words.
I’m still thinking about them.
Until next time,
~ Gail
PS. David Hockney (9 July 1937–11 June 2026). I’ve pulled out my books on David Hockney to reread. One of my favourites is The Bigger Message written with Martin Gayford. I also really enjoyed Volume 1 of Hockney’s biography. It’s time to purchase Volume 2! But it only goes to 2012 so I’m hoping there will be a final one in the series….
(Note: these are Amazon links – if you purchase with the links, I get a small commission.)
