Born 1961, Hemingstone, United Kingdom, in an old timber-framed house surrounded by trees. My father Dan is a fruit grower, my mother Henrietta a botanist and gardener. In my school years, my favourite place for studying was up an old willow tree in the orchard opposite the house, in a place up the massive trunk where the main framework branches were so large and flat as to create a convenient platform.

I studied medicine at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge for a couple of years before realising that my ambition of becoming a surgeon wasn’t wholly practical because of my tendency to pass out when I witnessed scenes of blood and human suffering. Plan B was painting and as I had been inspired by Gombrich’s book The Story of Art and in particular the sections on the Italian Renaissance, I hitch-hiked around Europe in search of a place to study painting. I visited Athens but didn’t connect with the city’s contemporary environment, so I returned to Italy where art is all over and in everything, from the country’s glorious natural habitats and farmland, right through to its amazing cities. I spent a year at Perugia Academy (Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci) before moving to Accademia di Brera in Milan, the city where Leonardo da Vinci spent two decades, painted some incredible pictures, and studied the natural world along with philosophy, engineering, anatomy, Latin and Italian.

In addition to painting, I worked in the areas of graphic design (Art’Idea Srl), translations, copywriting (WriteNow), and language teaching. At the age of 40 I decided to turn my lifelong dream of flight into reality and learnt how to fly at Delta Club Laveno on Lake Maggiore (here is a link to a video of me competing in a spot landing competition). After 20 years of absolutely unforgettable experiences in the air, I realised that my conviction that humans are born equal, and so are potentially capable of achieving good results in whatever field they wish, is absolutely untrue. My mental processes are simply too slow to perform the rapid responses that are essential when flying a hang glider, principally during launch and landing. But I only gave up, reluctantly, after an accident that has nothing to do with hang gliding. I fell from a ladder while at work on a building site, which caused me additional problems in reactivity and balance.

I had introduced my wife Sonia to sailing. We had many wonderful holidays on our boats, first Sogno then Ombra Vagabonda, in Liguria. She thought it would be a good idea to find a house somewhere near Genoa, which could also become a studio for both of us (Sonia is a talented ceramist). She found a property in Rossiglione, eight hectares of chestnut forest in an area of gentle mountains reaching about 6,000 feet. We now live in Milan for three days a week and in Rossiglione for four days. The house is named Fossarino, which I find curiously fitting because “Fossa” is a fairly close translation of my mother’s family name, Graves, and Rino was my nickname amongst my sailing friends. Here is a link to our Instagram diary of Fossarino.

At Fossarino I discovered the fascination of forest living. While I was initially horrified by the idea of cutting down living trees, I saw that chestnuts naturally form a clump of trees growing from the same root system, so you can cut down one trunk and the remaining three, four or five will continue to thrive. The local community taught me a lot, in particular the previous owners of Fossarino, Tonino and Anita Pizzorni, who ascribe their incredibly good health and fitness – they are currently in their 90s, and are never happier than when walking in the forest on the incredibly steep terrain – to having drunk the water that cascades down the slopes at one end of our property. Chestnut is a tough and durable timber, capable of surviving for centuries as roof beams and for decades as fence posts driven into the soil with no particular protection. I am fascinated by this timber and started to make pictures on old bits of wood on which I create a recessed rectangular area forming the base for the painting, so that the rougher areas of wood form the frame.

I mentioned an accident. On 17 November 2023 I fell from a step ladder during work on the roof at Fossarino and landed on some vertical metal pipes, injuring my head. Sonia was heroic in getting me to hospital by helicopter (unfortunately I have no recollection of that flight, nor the events of the next few months). I gradually recovered but I felt the need for more simplicity. So, to sign my paintings, I removed a few syllables from my name Johannes Henry Neuteboom, leaving simply Johann Boom. Three syllables are plenty enough. “Neuteboom” is an old Netherlands Jewish variant of “nooteboom,” walnut tree. This in itself is great, but I like the simplicity of “Boom,” which means “tree” in Dutch.