Exhibition

Matthew Lanyon

7 Jul 2011 – 28 Aug 2011

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Open Space Galleries

Falmouth, United Kingdom

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About

Matthew was born in St Ives, Cornwall in 1951, one of six children. His father was Peter Lanyon - a landscape painter who became a major figure in the world of art. Tragically Peter died at the young age of 46 as a result of a gliding accident in 1964.

Matthew spent his childhood surrounded by leading figures in the post war avant garde art movement in St Ives. His father's mentors were Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson. As Matthew recalls 'While I was tearing round the garden as Davy Crockett, the movers and shakers of art were passing the sugar and spreading the cream.'

With his father's death, Matthew consciously sought a different path than the artistic one. 'I won the art prize at 'O' level but deliberately set out to study something different. I studied science instead.' His teenage academic preoccupations led to a place at Leicester University, where he took a degree in Combined Sciences. He sees this as a deliberate attempt to escape his father's legacy, one that seemed more of a burden than a blessing.

Matthew did all manner of things before picking up his paint brush in the 1980's and applying himself seriously to painting. He started painting because 'I realised that you could have a sickness that can't be diagnosed. I understood that not painting was making me sick.' Even then, it was to be another decade before he felt he was painting in entirely his own way and he began showing them. Now Matthew has a considerable reputation and following for his landscape-based abstracts.

In talking about them he says 'the pressure points of Godrevy, Land's End, Portreath and St Michael's Mount. The axis of sunrise over Godolphin, the out flung arm of the Lizard, all whirl through the pinpoints of the Cornish compass in a kaleidoscope of topographical, cultural and familial references.' There is no denying the intensity, integrity, strength and sense of purpose of his work.

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