Portraiture alive and well, says painter Hockney

LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) The art of painting portraits is thriving despite reports of its death, Britain's most lauded living artist David Hockney said.

Speaking at the opening of a major exhibition of his portraits spanning his half century career to date, Hockney yesterday said a photographic portrait could only capture a fleeting moment while a painted one could probe far more deeply.

''With most photographic portraits, you get a 35th of a second whereas painting is longer exposures, so you are going to get something more interesting from them,'' he told reporters at the National Portrait Gallery in London. ''No, portraiture will never die.'' Hockney, born in northern England but long resident in California, said he was now producing his best work.

''I feel happiest when I have a brush in my hand. Most artists will tell you the work they are doing now is the best they have done. That is what I feel,'' said Hockney, 69.

Opening with three self-portraits dating from 1954 when he was just 17, the show includes 150 portraits with pen, paint and camera showing his versatility and skill as a draughtsman.

The exhibition, ''David Hockney Portraits - Life Love Art'', runs to Jan. 21.

Friends, family, the famous and the unknown are all captured by the relentlessly inventive Yorkshireman who admitted that each picture had captured a bit of himself along with the subject. ''Any show of portraits is bound to be personal.'' To underline the changing nature of his work, Hockney said that while he had meticulously planned and posed previous portraits in acrylic paints, his most recent works were in oil and painted straight from life on to the canvas.

''It is a tour through his life and times,'' curator Sarah Howgate told Reuters on a tour through the exhibition.

While the medium Hockney used changed continuously, three themes are clear -- his open admiration for Pablo Picasso, his deep attachment to his family, and particularly his mother, and his repeated return to sensitive pen and ink line sketches.

Indeed, Hockney said he increasingly saw echoes of his parents in himself -- despite the fact that they were fastidious and anti-smoking methodists whereas he is openly homosexual and an equally committed smoker.

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