Arthur Lanyon

Artist statement

My enquiry seems to grapple with the question; ‘How do you paint figuratively but subvert a traditional representation?’

To explore this I have tried to distance the work in thinking about opposites; which by their very nature attract and embellish one another’s potency formally, ultimately leading to a better understanding of itself.

Within painting the opposing spectrum is subject to the same material language and the challenge is to try and make them speak. So in effect my working process is back to front in that it engages the freedoms of abstraction, but edges towards the figurative as a way to catch form by surprise. This in between state is supplement to an ongoing push and pull where the urge to utilise these modes of painting are activated by one another’s absence.

There’s something in a realistic image I want but without the ‘boredom of conveyance’. So as a reaction to my impatience with illustration, the process is driven towards intuition and an idea of the subconscious as forgotten knowledge, an intelligence irrespective of conscious awareness but channeled immeasurably within the imagination. Direct painting seems to be the way to unload this knowledge most effectively.
And therefore these paintings are products of creative experience, an attempt to instigate a subject through extracting and building visual interest.

Simply

“I am seeking subject matter not abstraction”
Jonathan Lasker 1986