THE question of what to do with your life is often difficult to answer.

But sometimes the answer is simple.

In his own words, artist John Hitchens started painting the landscape of the South Downs “because it was there”.

If his five decades of painting, photography and sculpture are anything to go by, he appears to have made a good choice.

Insulated and isolated in his woodland studio near Petworth, the 80-year-old’s modern works are a far cry from his first exhibitions in the Sixties.

Nowhere is this more evident than John’s new exhibition at Southampton City Art Gallery, where more than 50 years’ work is laid out for all to see.

The artist’s earliest paintings are clearly drawn from the landscape around him.

This is something which runs in the family.

His father Ivon and grandfather Alfred were both respected landscape painters, while son Simon is a sculptor.

The Argus: The painter in his studio near Petworth. Photo: Anne-Katrin PurkissThe painter in his studio near Petworth. Photo: Anne-Katrin Purkiss

It was Ivon who moved to Petworth in a caravan in 1940, the year John was born.

“I was painting what was in front of me,” John told The Argus.

But observe his Eighties works and you start to see a departure.

For starters, the sky began to disappear from his paintings.

But it was the aftermath of the Great Storm of 1987 which prompted John to explore more abstract avenues.

“It blew down all the woods,” he said.

“It was exciting to approach a tangled mess of trees.

“I started to look down at the land instead.

“The sky got smaller and the land got bigger.”

John would fly from Goodwood Aerodrome and hang out of the window of a plane, taking pictures of the landscape from above.

The clearly defined lines of farmland and fields are a clear inspiration of his work from this point on.

Sometimes John painted black patches, inspired by the now-banned practice of stubble burning.

But in the last decade or two, the artist says his work is now inspired by itself.

“For the last ten or 20 years my art has been coming out of itself,” he said.

The Argus: Harvest Land Form, 2009, by John HitchensHarvest Land Form, 2009, by John Hitchens

“I do see a lot of similarities between old and new.

“All of them are connected by central ideas.

“Balance, order, forms, I think.

“If you put my paintings down next to each other I would see similarities, though others might not.”

But the change throughout his career has not always been even.

Looking back through his work, much of which has never been exhibited, he notices odd paintings which seemed years ahead of their time.

“Somewhere way back in the beginning I painted these totemic sorts of paintings, completely out of keeping at the time,” he said.

“You don’t like them at the time.

“But five or ten years later you look and it seems it’s been waiting for the right moment.”

John’s most recent work is almost totemic in style, cut tree bark painted with mesmerising shapes.

Looking back at 50 years of your work might cause you to get a bit a philosophical.

Was there ever an end goal or mission for John when he first started painting?

The Argus: Downlands Clouds, 1968, by John HitchensDownlands Clouds, 1968, by John Hitchens

“The joy of being creative is to follow the ideas where they flow,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s bigger, sometimes it’s incremental. It’s a sort of self-imposed quest.

“It’s just the joy of discovery, as simple as that.

“Fundamentally I wanted to create something that wasn’t there before.”

John’s exhibition originally opened in March before the coronavirus pandemic put a stop to it.

But the show’s reopening is well-timed after five months in which many have reevaluated their relationship with nature and the landscape around them.

“It’s been very well done, the lighting is fantastic,” said John. “I would like as many people as possible to see it. It’s the chance to see so many years of my work in one place.

“I won’t get that opportunity again.”

John Hitchens: Aspects of Landscape is running at Southampton City Art Gallery until October 3.

An accompanying book entitled John Hitchens: Aspects of Landscape, spanning 50 years of the artist’s work and including essays, is now on sale at sansomandcompany.co.uk.