Landscape photographer Joe Cornish and artist Kane Cunningham command national and international interest.

Their new exhibition promises to reinstate the significance of the landscape. Jo Hughes reports.

JOE CORNISH and Kane Cunningham have been friends for years. They share a love of the local landscape and interest in social politics as well as art.

Now, for the first time, an exhibition brings their works together to sit alongside other landscape artists.

On the surface it appears opposites attract – the clear, precise Joe Cornish photographs sit coolly beside Kane Cunningham's wilder, dashing watercolours. Beneath the surface, however, the two share themes.

Over the past two years, the Yorkshire-based artists have made largescale paintings and photographs, inspired by their response to the historic landscapes collection at Scarborough Art Gallery.

The resulting exhibition, Landscape Revisited, promises some departures from the norm for Cornish, and some exciting contemporary watercolours from Cunningham – the man famous for turning a house that is falling into the sea into an ever-changing work of art.

They hope to re-establish landscape, watercolour and photography as contemporary forces in British art.

Cornish, who lives in Great Ayton and owns the Joe Cornish Gallery in Northallerton, and Cunningham, who is based in Scarborough, have spent years trawling the countryside hunting out their art.

"In a way we are like hunter-gatherers," said Kane.

"Joe's working with a snare, he sits there until he gets his prey. I'm out there beating the bushes, flushing out the prey."

He laughs that even though Joe works with a digital camera, he will only take two shots in a day, sometimes one. But they are both in pursuit of the same game.

Kane says Joe approaches photography in the same way a painter approaches his paintings.

"Joe has walls with maps, he knows what he's doing, he understands the light and space, he knows where it will fall at different times of day. Watching Joe is watching a master craftsman at work, he considers the landscape as a painter would, and is conscious of what he can do to make art."

For Joe, Kane has provided the stimulation he needed to "loosen up".

"I started by going to the places in the paintings," he said. "As time has gone by I have loosened up, under pressure from Kane ... he is mischievous, he likes to question things."

The two are planning to work on a new approach of collaborations, cutting photographs and making collages with Kane's paintings.

Cornish says it is a risk for him, because the outcome is unknown. He has worked as a photographer for 30 years, which has led to success with his own gallery, books and a huge fan base.

He says he's at the stage in life where "if I don't take risks now I never will.

Taking risks is “fundamental as an artist".

He describes his work as being about the flow of light.

"There is an element of ideas – how you feel and how you want to see the world, but you let the light seduce you into it."

Cunningham is more impulsive, strapping himself to his Land Rover so he can paint stormy skies and losing his easel to the seas.

His starting point was "big skies, big seas, big landscapes", and for him, endless blue summer skies are "boring as hell".

His medium for this exhibition is watercolour.

"Watercolour is as valid as ever as contemporary medium.

It is one of the hardest mediums to use. You have to be a draughtsperson. The watercolour artist has to be really brave."

He talks to as many farmers as he can; their memories going back over the years give another political insight into the landscape.

Using the stories he has heard and the history he knows about the space he is painting, he "attacks" the paper with big bold brush strokes, angry, violent, expressive marks he says are also part of his character, and this is what elicits the contemporary look.

"The way I understand the landscape is contemporary," he said.

"I am influenced by the social, political, historical context.

I say to my students, ‘what are you looking at?’ A beautiful stone wall 150 years ago marked the beginning of social division. Understanding the landscape, you know how to paint it."

• Landscape Revisited is at Scarborough Art Gallery until December 4