"Come in quick, before he gets out,” says David Hockney, opening the door of his Kensington studio while restraining a biggish dog. Hockney is in London for the opening of a show called Drawing in a Printing Machine, which charts his latest co-opting of high technology. Only three days earlier, I had seen him fêted with an hour of speeches at what was described on the invitation as “the solemn opening” of a show of his landscapes, Nur Natur (Just Nature), in the exquisitely unspoilt little medieval town of Schwäbisch Hall, in southern Germany. He was looking relaxed and fit, having previously spent some time in his favourite spa, Baden-Baden, with his partner, John Fitzherbert.

In that itinerary, you can begin to grasp the many sides of the 71-year-old artist’s current life. It seems a good idea, therefore, to start by asking him where he now lives primarily — Los Angeles, London or Bridlington, in Yorkshire? “Lots of people still think you live mainly in Los Angeles, David,” I hazard. “Because I don’t make announcements,” he replies, with his usual drollness.

It was as though I had suggested some sort of Times Court Circular should be available. “When people ask me where I live, I always say I live wherever I happen to be,” he adds.

“In any case,” he continues, “I was never away from Yorkshire very long. My family was there, so I was always going back. What I realise now is that Bridlington is a sheltered place; London is not a sheltered place for me. There are loads of people wanting my time, which I am not willing to give now. So Bridlington is a perfect place, a little isolated town. The nearest big town, Beverley, is 20-odd miles away; York is 35 miles. It is quite physically isolated, which I like about it.”

He’s not cut off from the LA side of his operation, however, as he is quick to point out. “Of course, nobody is electronically isolated now. My sister, Margaret, has a com­puter, and it was she who turned me on to one of its uses. I do sketches. She would say, if I came in at about six o’clock, ‘What did you do today?’, and so I would show her the sketchbook and she would scan it onto this computer. Then we realised we could send it to [Hockney’s assistant] Gregory in California. Six o’clock in Bridlington is 10am in LA. So I would send him two or three drawings. ­Suddenly there is a connection, a very direct connection. Everything, including paintings, goes back to LA because it’s my actual physical base. That is where all the archive material is. I can’t move it. There’s a hell of a lot of stuff there.”

Bridlington, where he now has a big studio, is perfect for him at his age, he says. “Every day, I work. And when I stop work, I am still thinking about it.”

It’s there he has found the trees that dominate his oil paintings now. In the Just Nature exhibition in Germany, the large, naturalistic paintings magically transport visitors straight into the Yorkshire woods. Hockney found the local German landscape “a little bit like East Yorkshire... not too many people, very small roads without white lines in them, little rolling hills and individual trees that you could see”. In one room, you can look at some sketchbooks in showcases, and on the wall his sketchbooks are flicked through for you on video.

Much of Hockney’s early work was urban, and full of ideas and different styles. I wondered whether the Yorkshire landscape was making him a realist painter who is ruled by nature. He has talked of freestanding trees being “the best physical manifestation we see of the life force”.

But he stresses the continuity of his inspiration as an artist. “If you have lived in Los Angeles for 25 years, you do know the power of nature there.

“People here might call it La-La land and stuff like that, but I will point out that they are very aware of the power of nature, simply because the earth can tremble. They have earthquakes. They never forget that nature is a very powerful force. I read in a paper that after earthquakes in LA, most of the damage to people has been from broken windows and people treading on glass with bare feet. So I always have slippers by the bed there.

“And, as you know, I have a rather lovely garden in LA. It has taken 20 to 25 years to get to what it is. I am surrounded by nature. LA isn’t the concrete city a lot of people think. It is actually full of green, with a lot of wild animals. I could not let my little dogs out at night, because there are coyotes out there.”

It seems a long way from coyotes to Drawing in a Printing Machine, his show at the Annely Juda gallery, although it does contain landscapes as well as portraits. The prints are made by drawing and collage, then printed out on inkjet colour printers, Hockney explains in the catalogue. “They exist either in the computer or on a piece of paper; they were made for printing, and so will be printed. They are not photographic reproductions.” The strongly coloured portraits feature many of the usual suspects among Hockney’s family, friends and assistants, but also less familiar faces: his Yorkshire neighbour Sir Tatton Sykes, for example, and Francis Russell, a Christie’s expert. The strong colours are echoed in the landscapes — in a piece entitled Summer Sky, swirling skies over fields so vivid that they seem to be in motion; in Rainy Night on Bridlington Promenade, shimmering puddles of cerulean blue where you can almost hear the raindrops plopping down.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010