IVON HITCHENS: POETRY IN PAINT

As Wyndham Lewis remarked over seventy years ago, one can spot a Hitchens half a mile away. But what is it that makes almost any of his paintings stand out from those surrounding it in a mixed exhibition or a public gallery? First, surely, the impact of his colour - its freshness and luminosity, second his unique pictorial language - bold brush marks on a background of brilliant white priming; and third the wide format which he adopted initially for his landscapes but then extended to other genres too. Hitchens' unique form of expression was something that continued to develop throughout his sixty-year painting career, tending towards a self-sufficient arrangement of colour masses and directional brushstrokes and an ever more economical notation of the thing seen. Like the wide format, it originated in his response to landscape and was then adapted to his painting of flowers, nudes and interiors until, in his full maturity, one language could serve all genres. 

Peter Khoroche