‘Coast’
Watercolour on paper
466 x 620 mm
1953
‘Headwind’
Oil on canvas
1219 x 1981 mm
1961
‘Offshore’
Oil on canvas
1530 x 1842 mm
1959
‘Green Place’
Oil on canvas
760 x 1020 mm
1959
“All Lanyon’s forms derive, in a very strict sense, from sensory experience of his subject: and I do not limit this to visual experience, because he admits feeling, knowledge and experienced sensation from more than one of his senses. What he sees as he walks or rides on his motorbike through the landscape may constitute the larger part of what goes into a picture. But what he experiences physically – the up-and-downness of the path: the sliding pastness of house, rock or hill as he rides along: the going-throughness of a gap between the rocks – equally has a place in the amalgam of his painting, contributing to the totality of his awareness of the landscape … With Lanyon, every canvas recreates a particular hill (or harbour, or cliff) by merging the evidence gained through numerous channels from more than one viewpoint” Patrick Heron
Lanyon took up gliding in 1959 and this had a profound effect on his work as he translated the experiences that he encountered in the air into his paintings, collages and constructions.
‘This is why I do gliding myself, to get actually into the air itself and get a further sense of depth and space into yourself, as it were, into your own body, and then carry it through a painting. I think this is a further extension of what Turner was doing’. Peter Lanyon
Peter Lanyon : Tate Collection
Peter Lanyon : Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert
This is such a great painting!