Homing instincts

"I started out as a joiner," he says, "like my father before me."

The beautiful handmade kitchen cabinets reveal his skill in this field, but although John started making furniture early in his career, it seems he had creative energy to spare.

In the 1960s, John made and sold suede and leather clothes on London's King's Road. He later turned to making rocking horses, beautifully crafted in the old style, as the photographs he shows me demonstrate, and they eventually found his way to painting.

Tucked away amid rows of 1960s' houses, a stone's throw from the Selby tollbridge, the Thornton residence, a Grade II listed building, dates back to at least 1790, although John believes earlier. "This was the farmhouse for land which is now up to Barlby. Within the last 100 years land was sold off for factories and then for workers' homes.

"The main road to Selby used to run in front of the house, but when the bridge was built, it was diverted."

From the kitchen window, through collected fragments of stained church windows (one from Philadelphia) you can see the flood wall, not two metres from the house, that runs all the way to York to keep the River Ouse at bay. "We keep being told it's going to flood, but it never has," says John,

The family bought the house in 1953. "The same year Everest was conquered and Elizabeth crowned," volunteers John. At that point the house was split into three units, which is how it remains today. John, his wife Deborah and son Louis live in one third and his sisters have the other two. It seems to work well.

The result is a comfortable family home with an unusual layout. The kitchen is on the ground floor, a bedroom and bathroom is on the first floor and on the second is a large sitting room and the master bedroom. The top floor originally served as a sleeping place for farm labourers. When the family first moved in, they found an iron camp bed and straw mattresses up there.

On the first floor landing is a carousel horse called Nina who, says John, is around 90 years old. A lion from an Indian children's roundabout sits on the windowsill and is John's most prized possession. "If my house was on fire, it's the first thing I'd grab. My daughter bought it for me from Gordon Reece Galleries when she was about eight."

John seems drawn to things that are handcrafted but also to things that are playful. In the kitchen is a collection of antique French and Sicilian puppet heads that call to mind the tale of Pinocchio. In the sitting room, a Guatemalan festival figure sits atop a speaker. In the kitchen, a pair of toy lizards are artfully arranged on the wall. The drawer of an aged jelly cupboard is opened to reveal a collection of pistols – cap guns made of cast iron mostly from America.

From the top floor of the house there are views of Selby and the river rushing by. It is to water that John is drawn in his work – he mostly paints seascapes – and to the shores of the South-West, particularly Cornwall where he spent the summers of 1967-8 living in the sand dunes.

"The sea is a perfect subject, constantly changing in nature and mood. It provides an endless template with which to work."

John works in mixed media, often using acrylic, watercolour, gouache and ink within the same painting and allows the materials to merge and run into each other. He also adds texture with materials such as sand, shells and rope collected while beachcombing.

His studio, outside in the garden, is full of such treasures, just waiting to be used.

John Thornton's work is in the Woods & Waves exhibition from today to May 9 at Chantry House Gallery in Ripley. Tel: 01423 771011