Meet the former hippy who took up art full-time at the age of 60 and is now 80

“From the map that I saw, it was the farmhouse that owned the land right up to where the pickle factory is, and when the flour mill is now. They slowly sold it off. Pond Street is where the pond was, because all big farmhouses had a pond,” says John.

A farmhouse may sound rural, but this one is on a bumpy road at the end of a suburban street. The main road into Selby passes nearby. Much as his farmhouse isn’t rural, John hasn’t really stayed in one place. In the 1970s he lived in London for five years, making leather clothing to sell on the King’s Road. Before that he travelled around Morocco with his partner at the time, then lived in Cornwall for two years, sleeping in the sand dunes

He’s married now to Debbie, and they have been together for 40 years. “You were a hippy in Cornwall,” Debbie says, laughing.

“I was quite wild in my youth,” admits John.

“I would have liked to have slept in the sand dunes,” says Debbie, a semi-retired nurse practitioner. After his hippy days, John, moved back to Yorkshire, where he has remained ever since. For the day job, he was a joiner on building sites, and also at the flour mill behind his house, where he did maintenance work.

“I’ve always, always made things, like I made this,” he says, thumping the oak table in the kitchen. My dad was a carpenter. He made all our kitchen units before he passed away, and they’ve been there for 30 years.”

His grandfather was a cabinet maker who fitted out banks and made shuttering for the University of York. Alongside his work, John always had artistic leanings, making and repairing furniture, carving and renovating carousel horses. He and Debbie would hunt out ‘wounded’ carnival animals, and once drove back from the south with a big carousel chicken strapped on top of their Beetle. “I like a productive day, I do,” he says. “At school I was very good at drawing, very good at woodwork. And not very good at anything else. When it came to spelling, and arithmetic I was near the bottom of the class. But woodwork and art, I was at the top.”

He decided to paint full time in March 2004, aged 60. Early encouragement came when he entered the open exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull and won one of the best in show awards. His work was spotted by Ann Petherick, who runs the gloriously eccentric Kentmere House Gallery at her home in York. She has sold his art ever since. “I thought something is happening here, something good is happening,” John says. His work is also on show at the Chantry House gallery in Ripley until August 25. It’s a joint exhibition with James Wheeler, former carpet designer turned artist. Both are 80 this year, and the show marks their joint birthdays – as an earlier show did ten years ago when they turned 70. John loves to paint the sea but worries about being typecast, so has added streams, woodland and other rural scenes to his repertoire. At first he painted the sea off Cornwall, where he’d slept on those sand dunes. After people asked him why he didn’t paint the Yorkshire coast, he looked closer to home. “ We realised what we’d missed,” he says. “The Yorkshire coast is absolutely stunning and now I only paint the Yorkshire coast. But unless you’re putting actual figures or houses in, a seascape can be anywhere.” His most popular artwork is called The Wave. He can produce this painting to order, each slightly different, but all focused on the foaming power of a breaking wave.

“I can’t paint the same,” he says. “The way I paint, I don’t paint on an easel. I paint flat. Because it’s the sea, I tend to paint it very wet, you get the flow. It would all flow off if you used an easel.” John also incorporates sand, bits of material, plastic, netting and rags, anything washed up on the beach, although nowadays the beach is often tidied up before he can scavenge. He paints mostly in acrylic, adding watercolour gouache, and ink, and letting it all bleed into the painting; the found elements add texture. He also carves beautiful seaside birds from driftwood. There are three on the sideboard in the kitchen, carved from one piece of wood. The legs and beaks are pieces of reinforcing metal washed up from concrete bunkers and the like.

“It has to be found wood,” John says. “People say why don’t you just go to the woodyard, but when you use a piece of wood off the beach, it comes with its own story, and it’s a story you never know. You could own that object for 50 years and be no wiser where it came from.”

All that hasn’t been found is the paint and the glass eyes, bought from America. “They’re black-tailed godwits, local to the Humber estuary, as they feed in the mud and so on.” He also makes curlews, different sorts of fish, including the John Dory.

For Chantry House, John has painted ten new works, all from about ten inches square to a metre. “I like painting the bigger ones, but you don’t sell many bigger ones as people can’t accommodate them in their houses,” he says. He never paints the sea on a calm day, as he craves motion. He is thrilled by the changes in the sea, loves a stormy day in Whitby, with the sea putting on a show. He will always paint, he says. “People like to spend time by the sea when it’s calm, but they don’t want paintings of that. They want a wild sea with drama. You have to do what interests you. It’s like anything in life, whether you cook or garden or paint, you’ve got to have a real interest in what you do. If you haven’t the interest, you won’t make a good job. My grandad used to say, ‘If you can’t do it right, lad, don’t do it at all’.”

John used to paint upstairs in his and Debbie’s bedroom, using an easel, paint splattering everywhere. “We’d be sleeping in the middle of it,” says Debbie.

“I was in trouble,” John says. When he retired, Debbie pointed him towards what had been his joinery workshop in the garden. Now he can drip paint wherever he wishes.

Chantry House Gallery is in Main Street, Ripley, Harrogate HG3 3AY.