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119 John Minton (1917-1957) The painter sees a landscape; it awakens in him a certain emotional, imaginative and plastic response: his problem is to find within the medium of drawing and painting, by a selection of the forms in nature, the equation between his initial response and the structure and discipline of making a picture. The more fully the equation is realized, the more completely will the picture express the individual emotion of the painter. (John Minton, quoted in 'The Imaginative Impulse', Vogue, August 1948) Prunella Clough (1919-1999) I am not interested in fields and woods even though they are man-made. I prefer to look at the urban or industrial scene or an unconsidered piece of ground… The landscape which preoccupies me happens to be in its nature very geometric, like the triangular gable of a roof, the crossed bars of a gate or the circular shape of an oil drum seen head-on. I find these basic shapes sympathetic. Bearing in mind my partiality as a painter for the trace rather than the direct frontal confrontation or representation. (Prunella Clough, interview with Brian Robertson, 1982) Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) I am entirely ignorant of a countryman's knowledge. I don't know any facts about the countryside… the names of crops or what the soil will bear. I only see, and my eyes will tell me, gradually, all I need to know. It is very gradually indeed, this seeing, because to be of any value it must be a penetration, the eye must find the life underneath the facts…often it's a warm vision of land loved and served for many hundreds of years, quietly and instinctively, but sometimes it has savagely shaped rocks and trees, dark undergrowth or desolate spaces that carry other sights and tales. (Michael Ayr ton, quoted in Justine Hopkins, Michael Ayrton: A Biography, André Deutsch, 1994) John Craxton (1922-2009) You might say that mine is 'escapist' art and, somehow, it became an antidote to the war in the same way that Palmer's was an antidote to his times: he felt an impulse to draw the way he did despite the contemporary scene. Perhaps I am a romantic and romantic painters make pictures as extensions of themselves; they cannot be accused of being objective. I think nostalgia can be a motivating force. (John Craxton, interview with Gerard Hastings, 1985) Alan Reynolds (1926-2014) Poetry is never absent from nature, but alone it cannot constitute a work of art. It must be reconciled with the elements of design and composition. Laying emphasis on the formal values in a work will therefore result in a degree of abstraction. This is, to me, the logical development of the motif towards its transformation into a picture. (Alan Reynolds, catalogue note, Redfern Gallery, London, 1953)