The sad passing of David Hockney made me take stock of my life. As I approach 78, I realise I must fill each day with something meaningful. Ok, Hockney was what people call 'a good age', whatever that means. He was the sort of icon you imagine to be immortal, like David Attenborough and the Queen. I was surprised how many children were affected by his death. With exclamations such as "Oh no!", "Never", and "Why?!", I received some heartfelt tributes from children around the world showing how he was loved and respected by all ages.

It brought back memories of last year's 'Being Hockney' children’s art exhibition, which I curated at the Trapezium Art Gallery in Bradford. Unfortunately, this year's exhibition had to be cancelled because the gallery was closing down. It was attached to the Kirkgate market hall, which will be demolished shortly.

To cushion the children's disappointment, an online art competition emerged. The amount and quality of work I received have been overwhelming. While confined to barracks during this heatwave, I have been ploughing through the hundreds of submissions and am grateful I have commissioned three independent artists to judge and find winners.

I hear many schools have closed down in accordance with health and safety. Social media has had a field day with complaints regarding working parents having to pay for childcare, etc. There would be even more of an uproar if their children ended up in A&E with sunstroke, but that's another matter.

Without straying too far away from art and getting into political debates, I just want to say one thing to all the comments such as `back in our day'. Back in our day was not always a good thing. I remember as a fair-skinned, white-haired 5-year-old getting dreadfully burnt on holiday in the Dales and my mother just slapping some sort of cream on after the event. In the sixties as teenagers we poured Johnson’s baby oil (other brands are available) and sizzled in the sun as our skin literally fried.

I digress.

Spending days at home, hopefully indoors, must have given children the opportunity to get out their paint or crayons and create some beautiful artwork. I love the freedom children and young people express when painting. Their wild imagination and how they can push boundaries, so often suppressed by curriculum rules or how art is expected to be interpreted. I'd like to think as an artist I have retained some of that imaginative freedom, whether in my paintings or in the books I have written. It's often a relief and a path of escapism to dream away in front of my easel or scribble story ideas in a notebook.

A very brief moment away from my laptop screen, I took my coffee to sit (covered in factor 50) in the garden and looked up at the cloudless blue sky, imagining David Hockney up there somewhere with his paintbrush and palette of blue paint painting away to bring a smile to our faces. There you go. I still have an imagination, although I do wonder why we look up to the sky when talking about the deceased.

The artwork I have chosen for this article reflects just how children can use their exciting imaginations to produce joyous pieces of work


Please send any artwork to purplegrandma48@gmail.com