One might expect to find John Hitchens in a reflective mood. This year marks the artist’s 80th on the planet and he has a new retrospective open at Southampton City Art Gallery spanning more than seven decades. But the frenetic creativity that has fuelled his career thus far remains undiminished; he has little time for looking back when there is still much to be done.
In his warren of a studio, hidden away in ferny woodland outside Petworth, the shelves are packed with notebooks of ideas yet to be realised. “I’ll never run out,” he says, eyes bright behind thin-framed glasses. “But I may run out of time.” So far from scaling back, he intends to scale up, launching into his largest painting to date this winter. His work has been getting progressively larger for years now and several of the paintings on show at Southampton run across multiple panels. “You have a different physical relationship to the canvas the larger it is. You look up to the painting rather than down on it. It changes your perspective.”
Hitchens has spent nearly his entire life making art, much of it in this same patch of West Sussex. His father, the painter Ivon Hitchens (himself the son of the Victorian painter Alfred Hitchens), moved into a caravan here when he was bombed out of his home in 1940. He later built the studio where his son still works today, each room now an Aladdin’s cave of canvases, sketchbooks, found objects and curious creations. It was his father who presented him with his first paint box aged nine: “That was when I did my first ever oil painting. I loved [oils] immediately.”
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2020-Ausgabe von Sussex Life.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2020-Ausgabe von Sussex Life.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
TAKE YOUR TIME
Dean Edwards’ new cookbook features delectable recipes that you can slow cook or stick in the oven. Here’s a selection of the best
Decorative art
Not simply functional, treat your walls like an extension of your personality
ON THE FRONT FOOT
The rugby legend took the reins at Sussex County Cricket Club in 2017, rekindling his love for a sport that first won his heart on the village cricket fields of North Yorkshire
NAKED AMBITION
In the 1980s, Christine and Jennifer Binnie partied with Boy George and Marilyn and bared all as performance art collective The Neo-Naturists. Now they are working together to gain the recognition they feel they deserve
ROCKET MAN
Astronaut Tim Peake has come a long way since growing up in Westbourne and attending Chichester High School for Boys: 248 miles above Earth, to be precise. But, he says, life on the International Space Station has a lot in common with family caravanning holidays
Revolution man
Lewes’ most famous resident Thomas Paine may be the greatest propagandist who ever lived. But how did a humble customs and excise officer ignite the touchpaper for revolution in not one but two countries?
THE DIARY
17 exciting things to do this month in East and West Sussex
All in a day's work
Meet Tim Dummer, who has helped keep Midhurst’s Cowdray Estate shipshape for an impressive five decades
My favourite Sussex
Bruce Fogle is an author and a vet with a practice in London who has lived in West Sussex with his wife, the actress Julia Foster, since 1989. He recently became president of RSPCA Mount Noddy near Chichester
10 OF THE BEST Meat-free restaurants in Brighton and Hove
Brighton is often rated one of the most vegan-friendly cities in the UK. What these restaurants prove is that plant-based food doesn’t have to be puritanical – at all of these places you’ll find big flavours and a desire to push the envelope