HIS PAINT’S NEVER DRY
Marine artist John Horton, seen in his studio in Tsawwassen, was recently awarded an SS Beaver medal for outstanding achievement in the maritime sector. For more, see
John Horton can’t afford his own artwork, at least, not the five-ounce gold coin he designed for the Royal Canadian Mint in 2013. An intricate rendition of the victory of HMS Shannon over USS Chesapeake in the War of 1812, it sells for $12,000. (Be forewarned, there’s a limit of three per household.)
Last month, Horton, an 81-yearold native of England who moved to Canada in 1966, was one of four individuals awarded an SS Beaver medal (made from metal salvaged from the wreck) for outstanding achievements in B.C.’s marine sector by the Maritime Museum of B.C.
We sat down with the artist and longtime search-and-rescue volunteer, who has about 1,900 paint- ings and a beautiful coffee table book to his credit, at his home studio in Tsawwassen.
Q: You’ve said a “catastrophic accident” as a boy was the catalyst for becoming a painter. What happened?
A: When I was four years old I had a very bad road accident that put me in Tidworth Military Hospital outside Salisbury for a year. They saved my life. Because I’d broken so many bones, I wasn’t encouraged to get into football and rugger. Sailing was the most dangerous sport I was allowed to do. So I went into music and art.
Q: Your attention to detail is legendary. You’ve even been described as verging on pathological.
A: (Laughs) At my very first exhibition I was introduced to Claude Muncaster, a famous British marine painter. I asked him what he looks for in an artist’s work.
He said, quite roughly, “It has to be properly painted and technically accurate.”
I immediately took that as a lesson. Because I deal with so many mariners, they’ll be very quick to tell you if you’ve made a mistake, so you have to make sure that every rope goes through the right block.
Q: You’ll pore over a ship’s plans, even the logs.
A: Yes. There (pointing to a library shelf in his backyard studio) are Capt. Vancouver’s logs. Those are the details you have to study to get it right.
Q: And you’ve re-sailed the voyages of discovery Capt. Vancouver made from the Olympic Peninsula to Alaska between 1792-94.
A: Much of them. I’ve gone into every single inlet. I take Vancouver’s logs, and when we get to a spot, we’ll read the log to see what he did on a particular day, how they interacted with the native people, etc. From that I create my painting.
I’ve probably done 50 paintings of Vancouver’s voyages along the coast. I believe if you stopped 20 people on the street and asked where the name Vancouver comes from, very few people could tell you. He wrested the coast from the Spanish, which kept the Americans and the Russians out.
For Canadians, Vancouver’s voyage is absolutely crucial for the fact the country goes sea to sea.
Q: The Canadian Navy commissioned you to record action in the Gulf.
A: I joined the HMCS Algonquin and the HMCS Ottawa in 2002. I facetiously say that I was fighting al-Qaida with a paint brush. But we were searching for terrorists who were escaping by sea and I would go with the guys when they were doing searches. I ended up doing six paintings.
Q: You’ve also taken part in almost 900 search-and-rescue operations over 35 years that have saved or assisted more than 2,000 people. Where does that stack up among your other accomplishments?
A: I served for a while in the British Fishing Protection Fleet, which is part of the Royal Navy. We were around the tip of Iceland and Norway, the Russian coast up in the Arctic, protecting the fishing fleet, both on the political side as well as the search-and-rescue side. We were their floating hospital and mechanical shop.
There wasn’t a day go by where we didn’t have to attend to a medical emergency on a fishing vessel. Arms off, legs off, you name it. Brutal stuff. I developed a great empathy for the commercial fisherman. We have no understanding as a society of what our fishermen go through to bring food to the table.
Q: I’ve mentioned the work you did for the Mint on the Shannon/ Chesapeake coins, but you’ve done other projects, as well, the Edmund Fitzgerald, Franklin Expedition and Empress of Ireland among them.
A: I can show you the coins inside (the house).
Q: Not the gold 1812, though? A: No (laughs), I don’t get free samples, unfortunately. I bought one of the silver ones, it was $500, that was all I could afford.