Brian Horton is nationally recognised as one of Britain’s true ‘romantic’ landscape painters. His eye for the mystical is rooted in Samuel Palmer, but also extends into the traditions of Paul and John Nash. There is something visionary in his use of pure colour and the way birds, boats and flowers appear to grow out of his softly shifting hills, skies and shores. His landscapes are akin to watching fast-motion footage of a flower bloom or a seedpod burst: they are natural, but still a bit magical.
Born in 1933, Horton was educated at Shrewsbury School and Exeter College, Oxford. Following his National Service, he enrolled at Cheltenham College of Art. Horton has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Watercolour Society and has had a regular series of solo shows with David Messum for more than three decades. Horton continues to be Messum's most longstanding artist.
“I like to try and engage with a hint of paradise that lurks in the back of the mind and, though based on reality, my pictures are not painted to imitate a photographic image, but from my own thoughts and feelings; perhaps a private vision, but one which I hope others might recognise.” - Brian Horton