[Photo/China Daily]

Hockney played it cool, even searching his pockets to find a cigarette before answering the last question. He lit the smoke, igniting laughter and a murmur of excitement throughout the auditorium.

Hockney continues to explore his obsession with the Yorkshire landscape in The Arrival of Spring. The exhibition is a smaller version of the show of the same name held at Pace New York last year. On display are dozens of drawings Hockney drew on an iPad. The artist, who was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, captured the small changes from winter to spring in drawings which he did in 2011. Sensitive emotions and discerning observation underlie his repeated portrayal of stretching country roads, awakening plants and blossoming flowers.

Two giant video installations show the greenery and snowy scenery of Woldgate, a town in East Yorkshire. Each includes 18 screens that project dozen of views shot by different cameras in a moving car. Hockney attempted to reproduce what people actually see when their eyeballs move and change perspectives.

One of his inspirations is the Chinese scroll painting. He first saw scroll paintings at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983. He was amazed at the approach to "changing perspectives in motion".

"I'm interested in everything that makes pictures," he says.