David Hockney: Art's great innovator whose vivid paintings made him a household name

David Hockney, who has died aged 88, was Britain's favourite artist - and a man of trenchant views, expressed in the broadest of Yorkshire vowels.

A genius in practically every medium, he worked with paint, photographs and iPads. He did etchings, lithographs, even stained glass windows - equally at home working with the grandeur of opera design and the intimacy of pen and ink.

A peroxide Bradford blond with round glasses and cheese-cutter hat, he set the art world alight in the 1960s, and packed out art galleries more than half a century later.

In 2018, one of his swimming pool paintings sold for nearly £70 million at auction - a record for a living artist. But Hockney was surprised at the public enthusiasm for his work.

He had simply followed one rule: "Paint the things you love".

His father, Kenneth, was a conscientious objector who detested social injustice, nuclear weapons and smoking in equal measure. His mother, Laura, was the backbone of the family: strong-willed and devoutly Methodist.

David was one of five children; a tight-knit, loving unit jammed into a tiny terrace in Bradford. During bombing raids, they hid under the stairs clutching bibles. In 1940, one explosion flattened the street.

He was single-minded and devoted to drawing. The wartime shortage of paper restricted his early efforts to the kitchen floor and hymn books in church.