‘I’m working with landscape and mythology; two figures – male and female, land and sea: It’s a way to explore something, often coming again to places in Cornwall I experienced as a child, moving between the symbolic, the imaginary and the real.’

This small, intimate work by the late St Ives artist, Matthew Lanyon, encapsulates several of the artist's archetypal motifs in his mytholgising of the Cornish landscape. For example, the downward-pointing triangle, or 'v' shape, seen in the upper right corner of this work, is an ancient and powerful archetypal motif associated with the sacred feminine – a direct symbol of the goddess archetype, embodying feminine energy in its various forms of creation, destruction, and transformation. Conversely, his use of an upward-pointing triangle to imbue a landscape feature with 'sacred masculine' energy is evident in many of his works. The 'grid' of white spots in the upper-mid area of this work, suggestive of Aboriginal and Palaeolithic rock art, may symbolise the stars, the maker's connection to the land, and its spirit, or may be a lunar calendar. They are just one of many cyphers to be discovered and puzzled over in Lanyon's rich visual vocabulary – alive with multilayered motifs and references to quantum physics, Greek mythology, and the artist’s own odyssey back into the pre-history of Penwith.

Matthew studied Geology and Psychology at Leicester University, flitting feverishly between the History of Science, Archeology, and Linguistics in his final year.

A thrilling, dramatic sense of aerial perspective in some of Lanyon’s larger canvases is informed by his love of gliding above the West Penwith landscape. Matthew Lanyon is the second-eldest son of the celebrated painter Peter Lanyon (1918–64) – an undeniable influence in Matthew's works, which are held in many private and corporate collections.