Weathering

The 1960s marked a profound change in the way Peter Lanyon worked. This transformation was driven by the vivid experience of flying solo in a glider, a moment which Lanyon had been anticipating from the mid-1950s in paintings such as Bird Wind, 1955, (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). Gliding enriched Lanyon’s exploration of movement, allowing him to fly above the places of North Cornwall, thus elevating his perspective of the landscapes he painted fanatically. This progression from landscape to airscape is reflected in Weathering; Lanyon utilises a lighter palette, experimenting with thick gestural veils of colour connoting movement through air. At the same time, he also leaves reference to his earlier work with hints of earthy tones in dry brushstrokes. However, these hints of brown and green are greatly surpassed by the heavily daubed stripe of white covering the left of the board.

Lanyon’s work begins to open up in this period, no longer embedded in the tightly packed and darkly layered canvases of the 1950s. He grapples with the possibility of eliminating all representation from his art as he conveys his specific experiences with a new process, lighter palette, and an increased speed and movement to his brushwork. This evolution means that the early 1960s were a time of intense output and experimentation. When Peter Lanyon painted Weathering in 1960 he was entering the most productive year of his career, calling his new genre his ‘Weather Paintings.’

Gliding was not the only catalyst for Lanyon’s fast-developing style, the affiliation with Rothko and the influence of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York meant that he remained devoted to abstract ideas. This combination of regional landscape and international abstraction contributed to Lanyon’s totally unique position. Lanyon's work defines a unique place between the two styles; ‘These paintings are not abstract nor are they landscape, they use abstraction as a method and landscape as a source’.