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