Ivon Hitchens grew up in Berkshire and studied at St Johns Wood School of Art. After his studies he travelled to New Zealand, but returned home after a period of two years due to a severe illness. Interested in light, tone, colour and form, his landscapes can be seen as an experience or memory of being in a particular space rather than a direct representation as such. He saw colour as light and light as space. His house was bombed in 1940 so he moved to a patch of woodland in West Sussex, at first living in a caravan, and later acquiring numerous outbuildings. He stayed there for the next forty years painting and creating works and only once went abroad as he felt that his time as an artist was too precious to spend travelling.