My Mother Sleeping, Los Angeles

My Mother Sleeping, Los Angeles is a 1982 photo collage piece by British artist David Hockney. Released in a limited edition of 20, it depicts Hockney’s mother Laura, one of his most famous muses, during a visit to the artist’s Los Angeles home. Peacefully asleep in an armchair, there is a stillness to the image that reflects the introspective period in which it was produced. Composed in the aftermath of Hockney’s father Kenneth’s death in 1982, much like My Mother, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, November (1982) and My Mother, Los Angeles, Dec (1982), this piece evokes the artist’s love for his mother. In contrast to other ‘joiner’ images produced in this period, namely Luncheon At The British Embassy, Tokyo, February 16th 1983 (1983), Hockney’s multi-perspectival approach to photography does not aim to commit movement to the page. Instead, the many individual photographs which constitute this work are testament to the time it took the artist to take them – a time spent gazing at his mother so as to achieve a level of detail which would see her ‘preserved’. Focusing on each part of the figure with intent, here Hockney’s mother becomes the subject of the artist’s reverence; rather than darting around to focus on the many individual objects which adjoin the scene, as in My Mother, Los Angeles, Dec (1982), here Hockney’s eye is still.