DescriptionThis print (and its companion, Underground) was created in a studio above the Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall. Warren Mackenzie at the time was a visiting American student potter and worked on the print with Lanyon. The work is characteristic of Lanyon’s approach to landscape painting. John Berger writes of Lanyon’s work that he gathers….’into one painting the sensation and vision of many separate viewpoints. He tilts the landscape up and looks at it from the air, he extends it sideways…’.Yet the background white – just as with the central black in the Underground print – is reminiscent of kanji, Japanese script, and may echo the influence that Japan had on Mackenzie’s teacher, Bernard Leach.
