Art and artists

John Hewitt

I want to share my joy and enthusiasm of the landscape, by using those elements that inspire me to create entirely new images and forms. For me the inspiration comes from the relationship that man has to the landscape, in the way that the roads and highways, and other structures work with the landscape rather than trying to compete against it; as if these human forms acknowledge the natural superiority of the land.

My own reaction to the landscape was formed in early years when we were one of the few families with a car, and we travelled through the landscape (rather than being walkers, climbers or farmers). The natural roll and pitch of the west coast route around the Lake District in Cumbria, is a joy. This is also articulated by the wind when it shapes a stand of trees into one homogenous form. I distil these forms into my own particular brand of Abstraction.

Conflict of Interests

I use wooden constructions, and latterly MDF (thank goodness for MDF!), and then stretch canvas over them. I then paint the forms I have created in response to them rather than the original source material. I even spray the Acrylic paint at low angles across the surfaces like rain chasing across summits and leaving rain shadows.
My fervent hope is that by sharing my own particular view of and reaction to the landscape of the Lake District, that other people will find their own way of enjoying it, and being inspired by it, and avoid being brainwashed into looking at it like all those dreary watercolour postcards.

I was brought up on the coastal apron of the Lake District and after spending 30 years in the wilderness I’ve earned the right to return. I studied Fine Art at the University of Reading but then did the honourable thing and went into teaching. After 17 years and the first year of GCSE the joke wore off. I had always maintained my painting whenever the opportunity allowed and I valued it as part of my credentials for instructing others. I returned to the north with the intention of testing my own mettle, and largely I have been hugely rewarded by the way the work has developed, most recently away from the brasher urban “pure” abstraction. If nothing else the quality of the craftsmanship has improved and the complexity of the constructions continues to tax me.

Painting is a solitary existence at the best of times, unlike music which provides its practitioners with opportunities to join together to make their art. Cumbria is a huge county with a small population and an even smaller infrastructure.

Words and pictures courtesy of John Hewitt.