Into the Deep foreshadows John Armstrong's paintings of the 1950's in which he began to explore the conflict between pattern and tactile form (the way in which volumes are described in space). For Armstrong, to whom natural objects should only be seen in their form and relationship in colour and design freed from their sentimental associations, the advance towards abstract art was inevitable. The material qualities which attract me to particular objects are those of convexity, concavity and flatness…the representation of objects seen or imagined is necessary to me not for the objects themselves but for certain of their material qualities or their power of emotional suggestion. The tempera surface of Into the Deep cannot be pinpointed in space. He appears, at this stage, not to have been greatly interested in the difference between abstract and figurative painting. (1) 1. Quoted by Annette Armstong in her introduction to the 1989 Exhibition Catalogue, 1893 John Armstrong 1973, Ewan Mundy & Celia Philo, page 3
Mrs. John Armstrong The Mayor Gallery, 1986
London, Unit 1, 1934 Portsmouth, Portsmouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Unit 1, May - July 1978, number (J.A.2) London, Mayor Gallery, British Surrealism Fifty On, March 1986, number 12, illustrated page 31 Leeds, Leeds City Art Galleries, Surrealism in Britain in the Thirties, October-December 1986, catalogue number 93, illustrated page 140 Finland, Retretti Art Centre, Surrealism, May -September 1987 Chichester, The Tudor Room, The Bishop's Palace, Sea, Sail and Shore, Festival Exhibition, June-uly 1991, number 22 Aldeburgh Festival Exhibition, Peter Pears Gallery, 9 -24 June 2006, catalogue number 5
Herbert Read, Unit 1, The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture, Cassell and Company, London 1934, illustrated page 45, plate XVIII Leeds, Leeds City Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, Surrealism in Britain in the Thirties, 1986, catalogue number 93, illustrated page 140 Retretti Art Center exhibition catalogue, Surrealism, 1987, page 138