Taking land’s temperature

Christopher Johnson insists that nature is the greatest teacher, but Turner, Constable and Reynolds also inspire, he tells Frances Law

Which landscape first captured your imagination?

As a four-year-old child, it was the road on the eight-hour drive from our farm in Rhodesia up to the Eastern Highlands. The landscape gradually transformed in texture, temperature of colour and physiognomy, as the road led to this high altar of mountains. This was such a full experience of landscape that included the scent of grasses and noises of pine needles brushing against the roof as I went to sleep.

Which landscapes always pull you back?

I am drawn to a hill above Balquhidder, an expansive view over the Cotswold landscape near Stanway and the vista from Coaley Peak overlooking the Severn River.

How does your international background fit with the tradition of British landscape painting?

The professors at the art school I went to in South Africa had been chosen from either the Royal College of Art or the Royal Academy schools. With this beginning, it was inevitable that it would frame some of my perspective. However, I have always found some of the stilted, correct and unemotional aspect of British art quite off-putting, and have tended to lean towards painters like David Bomberg and Matthew Smith, whose generosity and raw explosive power connect more with the French and German painters I admire.

How have the works of Constable, Gainsborough and Turner inspired you?

Constable for his tenacity and strength of purpose. Gainsborough for his capacity to envelop the warmth of temperature in colour and rhythm in landscape, and Turner for being like one of those stray dogs that have to pee on every corner of a street to own his vision in a foreign land. I like the way he painted his best work at the last, the empirical blaze of abstraction making Rothko look like a dance master at a finishing school.

In terms of skills what have you drawn from them?

I admire their attitudes, their approach, their courage to explain their visions in paint, and the risks taken to get there. Nature is our greatest teacher. There has been an unfortunate rise in academies purporting to teach old master methods to reams of students sold down the river by becoming subservient to technique and looking the same as each other. Painters should employ techniques to serve them as they find their own way, not stampede down the motorway following each other.

Is landscape painting in good shape now?

We are lucky to have titans like Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. My introduction to their work was fortunate enough to come from George Rowlett, surely the greatest landscape painter of his generation.

How have you added to the history of landscapes?

Techniques are simply a method to serve the artist's vision in a painting, and if it moves towards greatness, it is because the management of making that painting has transcended itself and equalled the artist's vision. Every painter should aim to be his greatest self, and down the line history will judge what we may have added, if anything. My work is about working in the landscape. I use colour as temperature and am battling to match its rhythms onto the canvas while I let the boiling pot of what is brewing in front of me transform itself into paint.