My friend David Hockney: Martin Gayford on the prophet of

Thanks to his sharp wit and turn of phrase, the British artist’s voice is almost as distinctive as his line. A new book introduced by the art critic Martin Gayford gathers his musings on art, life, nature, creativity and more

In a cardboard box in my attic there is a complete aural record of the first conversation I ever had with David Hockney. It is stored on dusty cassette tape which seemed like fairly current technology in 1995 when I interviewed him ahead of an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

David was then a youthful 58. Next week, on 9 July, he will celebrate his 87th birthday. If he was famous and prominent in those days, he is even more so now – a living old master who enthusiastically engages with the latest visual technology. His hugely successful “digital retrospective” Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away recently returned for another season at the Lightroom near London’s King’s Cross (until 6 October). And The World According to David Hockney, an illustrated anthology of his observations on topics such as drawing, photography, nature, creativity, the internet, and much more (to which I have written the introduction), was published last week by Thames and Hudson.