"They Can't Cancel the Spring": Teaching Hockney's Woldgate

A lesson on hope, recovery, and one of Hockney's paintings, for the language learning classroom

A few years ago, when I was in the middle of a very long and very slow recovery, I went to a Hockney exhibition, and it did something I didn’t expect: it gave me back a bit of hope I thought I’d lost. I sat and watched a documentary playing in the exhibition hall, and heard him say, "do remember they can't cancel the spring," and I remember standing there, repeating it to myself, feeling something wake up in me. One man, one exhibition, on a rainy day, did more for me than any treatment had. It reminded me that things happen, and we move on. It aches, and then it fades. Not forever, but it fades.

Ever since I heard the news of his death, I’ve been thinking about planning a lesson around one of his paintings.

I chose one of Hockney’s iPad drawings from The Arrival of Spring. You can use the lesson for any of the paintings in this series.

A little context to share with students, briefly: around 2011, Hockney started drawing on an iPad, sitting outdoors along a country lane called Woldgate and recording the same view repeatedly as winter turned into spring. This particular drawing shows one tree in full, bright leaf, surrounded by a still-grey sky and a landscape only just catching up to it.

Stage 1: Warmer

Before showing the image, get students talking in pairs about seasons in general:

• Which season do you look forward to most, and why?

• Describe one small sign that tells you a new season has arrived where you live.

• Has there ever been a period in your life that felt like “winter,” followed by something better?

Stage 2: Lead-in

Show the image and give students about a minute of quiet looking before anyone speaks. Then open it up with some noticing questions:

• What’s the first thing your eye goes to in this picture?

• How would you describe the sky? Does it match the tree, or contrast with it?

• What season do you think this is? What tells you that?

• If this picture made a sound, what would it be?

Once you’ve heard a few answers, give the context: an iPad drawing, made by Hockney outdoors, part of a series following one road through an entire spring.

Stage 3: Building a Word Bank

Ask students to look again and jot down words and phrases under these headings, working alone first and then comparing with a partner:

• Colour and light: the greens, yellows, and greys, and how they sit next to each other.

• Nature vocabulary: they can use a dictionary to name anything they spot.

• Mood or atmosphere: hopeful, calm, a little uncertain, somewhere in between.

• Contrast: what two things in the picture feel most different from one another?

After a few minutes of pair work, collect ideas on the board. On the board, introduce models:

• the tree is bursting into leaf

• the sky still looks quite heavy

• the foreground is scattered with fallen petals

Stage 4: Group Discussion — Reading the Weather

Put students in small groups and give them 5 minutes to discuss the following, using the vocabulary from the board:

• Do you think this is early spring or late spring? What in the picture makes you think so?

• If the (grey) sky represents something (difficult), and the tree represents something (hopeful), what might this picture be “about”?

• Have you ever noticed nature changing around you in a way that matched how you were feeling?

When groups share back, encourage the rest of the class to ask one follow-up question to each other, and remind everyone to use some speculative language while answering these questions. Before they start, write the following on the board to serve as models:

• it might represent... / perhaps the artist wanted... / it could suggest that...

Stage 5: Writing

Students choose one option and write 60–90 words:

• Option A (Descriptive): Describe the picture using vocabulary from the board — the colours, the season, and the mood it creates.

• Option B (Creative): Imagine you’re standing under this tree. Write a short paragraph about what you can see, hear, and feel.

• Option C (Grammar focus): Write a short paragraph comparing what the landscape looked like a few weeks earlier and how it looks now, using at least one sentence with the Present Perfect (e.g., “The tree has completely changed since...”).

Keep a few sentence starters visible for anyone who wants the support:

• In this picture, the sky looks...

• The tree is covered in...

• The overall feeling is... because...

Once the writing’s done, have students swap with a partner and underline one phrase they genuinely liked. No corrections at this stage, just a bit of positive noticing.

This also works well on Padlet if you want students to read a few classmates’ paragraphs and leave one comment before the lesson ends.

Stage 6: Speaking

New pairs, and a new set of questions to close the speaking:

• Do you agree that nature can reflect how we feel, or is that too simple?

• If you drew the same view near your home once a week for a year, what do you think would change the most?

Stage 7: Wrap-up

Hand out post-it notes and ask students to complete one of the following before they leave, adding it to your reflection wall (physical or on Padlet):

• One new word or phrase from today they want to keep.

• One sentence describing the picture using a word from the board.

• One small sign of a “new season” in their own life at the moment, if they’re comfortable sharing it.

If you liked this lesson, you may check one of my older posts: https://ajourneyintefl.substack.com/p/one-painting-one-lesson