Arthur Lanyon 'A Moon With A View'

ARTHUR LANYON

a moon with a view

Jackfruit Falling
oil stick, acrylic, watercolour, collage on panel
30 x 41 cm
2

A boy draws a tree for the first time. It’s
tall, no branches, just a trunk shooting up
to a leafy looking cloud (all simple cartoons
are the same). But he forgets what lives in
trees: owls. Looking at the skinny trunk he
decides to put the owl hole out on the left -
a free-floating circle. He thinks his drawing
looks good. So he doesn’t screw it up. His
dad blue-tacks it up on the wall by the
light switch.
The problem and solution to a lot of
paintings is in the shapeshifting between
background and foreground. In ‘The Full
Moon Over Water’ by Turner, the painted
waterscape represents the finite and the
moon - seemingly painted but actually bare
background paper - is the infinite. The
relationship between water and moon – and,
in my son Rory’s drawing, between tree and
owl hole – draws the viewer closer to the
non-material, further into the mysteries.
My mood board is full of little drawings and
photocopied things. Rory’s drawings are
there and also mine from when I was a boy.
A childhood drawing can filter through your
system like ‘chinese whispers’ and come out
as something new. Call it an unfamiliar
knowing. Using a little pencil sketch is like
consuming myself. It is strangely intimate
because the nature of the mind seems to
expand inwards to a place that cannot be
found in the world of objects. A 4 metre
painting is also a type of mood board.
In my studio a skeleton sits at a table
hunched over a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. A
skeleton looking at skeletons. It looks like
some serious self-enquiry has come to an
end. The still-life of bones poses all sorts
of abstract questions. They get answered
simply with paint.
I work in a polytunnel under a thin sheet
of polythene pulled tight over 12 thick
metal hoops. Outside, heavy rain drumrolls
a roof that is like the rib-cage of a
whale. Inside, drips form quietly before
they drop. Between all the ribs is a sort
of echo-chamber where I paint, wet-inwet,
with two brushes and both hands.
How autonomous the motion feels. It’s like
flossing a nerve from each side or combing
the center parting of a scattered mind.
It runs one way and then in reverse. You
can switch what each hand is doing – one
can mirror the other or wait and watch as
the other moves. I look at the skeleton,
the book, the roof, and focus on the gap
between things. Sometimes I forget to
breathe because it seems I am holding my
breath for something else.
A painting emerges when two opposite
structures begin to contain and accept
each other. It doesn’t always behave badly
like a goat and its tether (strung together
in this sentence). It’s more of a marriage,
like the roots of the Banyan tree both
pushing apart and holding together the
stones of the temple of Angkor Wat. All
manner of things materialize as the mind
works to create equilibrium. The value of
painting is that a good deal of thinking can
gradually surface.
Rory’s drawing entered a painting. Out of
the blue, a circle of bare canvas rests beside
a vertical divide, a tree trunk, topped with
a blob of autumnal tinged green. Owl
wingbeats spread flight patterns through
the air of the painting. It is called ‘Moon
with a View’.
Arthur Lanyon, June 2024
3

Quartz Crash
oil, oil stick, spray paint, charcoal, graphite, collage on linen
180 x 273 cm
4

5

6

The Landing
oil, oil stick, charcoal on linen
170 x 217 cm
7

Snail’s Pace
oil, acrylic, charcoal on linen
190 x 260 cm
8

9

Sentinelese
oil stick, charcoal, collage on panel
27 x 33 cm
10

Tripletta
oil stick, charcoal, collage on panel
62 x 47 cm
11

Pyro
oil, oil stick, charcoal on panel
62 x 47 cm
12

Timbras
oil, oil stick, charcoal, collage on panel
62 x 47 cm
13

14

Tinstone
oil stick, acrylic, spray paint, charcoal, collage on linen
120 x 102 cm
15

House Key
oil, oil stick, charcoal on linen
120 x 104 cm
16

17

Globemaster
oil, oil stick, charcoal, collage on panel
47 x 62 cm
18

Rattle
oil stick, acrylic, spray paint, charcoal, collage on panel
47 x 62 cm
19

20

Pink Jaune
oil, oil stick, charcoal, collage on linen
90 x 100 cm
21

Incus
oil, oil stick, acrylic, collage on panel
47 x 41 cm
22

Waystation
oil, acrylic, watercolour, charcoal, collage on panel
47 x 62 cm
23

Coral Diver
oil, oil stick, charcoal on linen
190 x 230 cm
24

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26

Moons of Djinn
oil, acrylic, charcoal on linen
165 x 217 cm
27

Beach Samba
oil, acrylic, charcoal on linen
195 x 165 cm
28

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30

Pope Purple
oil, oil stick, charcoal, collage on linen
190 x 140 cm
31

The Ice is Fully Grown
oil, oil stick, charcoal on panel
59 x 69 cm
32

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34

Good Bones
oil stick , acrylic, charcoal, collage on panel
62 x 58 cm
35

Caprock
oil, oil stick, acrylic, charcoal on panel
80 x 42 cm
36

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38

Atman
oil, oil stick, acrylic, spray paint, charcoal on linen
170 x 217 cm
39

Edge of Whiskers
oil, oil stick, acrylic, spray paint, charcoal on linen
190 x 260 cm
40

41

42

Flic-Flac
oil, oil stick, spray paint, charcoal on linen
190 x 240 cm
43

Zabuton
oil, oil stick, charcoal on linen
180 x 275 cm
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46

A Moon with a View
oil, oil stick, charcoal on linen
400 x 190 cm
47

Untitled 1
charcoal on paper
27 x 38 cm
48

Untitled 2
charcoal on paper
27 x 38 cm
49

Untitled 3
charcoal on paper
38 x 27 cm
50

Untitled 4
charcoal on paper
38 x 27 cm
51

Untitled 5
charcoal on paper
38 x 27 cm
50

Untitled 6
charcoal on paper
38 x 27 cm
51

Biography
Arthur Lanyon paintings combine intuitive figurative
motifs with an emotive, gestural, abstracted language.
His energetic works are sited on a physical and
metaphysical cross roads, like a belay between
numerous visual and emotional pinnacles. They offer
a progressive link between the outside world, the
inner architecture of the brain, altered states of
consciousness, memory and the unencumbered essence
of child’s drawing.
Arthur Lanyon is a British artist born in Leicester,
England in 1985. He lives and works from a studio
near Penzance, Cornwall. Born in to an artistic family,
his father was the painter Matthew Lanyon and his
grandfather the celebrated, influential and world
renowned modernist painter Peter Lanyon. He won the
Hans Brinker Painting Award in Amsterdam in 2007
and gained a first class degree in Fine Art from Cardiff
University in 2008. Upon graduating he was featured
in Saatchi’s ‘New Sensations’ exhibition. In 2014, his
work was in the long-list for the Aesthetica Art Prize
and was included in the award’s published anthology.
His debut Anima Mundi solo exhibition ‘Return to
Whale’ opened in 2016, which was followed by ‘White
Chalk Lines in 2018, ‘Arcade Laundry’ in 2020 and
‘Coda for an Obol’ in 2022. Works have been exhibited
extensively, notably including Untitled Art Fair in
Miami; Zona Maco, Mexico City; the Saatchi Gallery
London; The House of St Barnabas, London; CGK,
Copenhagen; Tat Art, Barcelona and Herrick Gallery,
Mayfair. Arthur Lanyon paintings are held in private
collections worldwide.

Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with Arthur Lanyon ‘A Moon With A View’
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