Matthew Lanyon (1951 - 2016) is considered one of Cornwall's most important artists. His paintings, tapestries, screenprints and assemblages employ an exclusive visual language created by the artist over his lifetime. Using this invented set of signs, his deeply allegorical works explore pattern and abstraction in the context of the history and landscape of Cornwall's West Penwith, where he was born and raised.
Matthew was born in St Ives, Cornwall in 1951, one of the six children of Modernist painter Peter Lanyon. He attended Port Regis and Bryanston School, Dorset, and later Humphrey Davy Grammar School, Penzance. In 1964, Matthew's father, Peter Lanyon, died as the result of a gliding accident, an event which had a profound effect on Matthews life, and later his career as an artist. In his twenties Matthew studied at Leicester University, starting originally with Geology and Psychology, but later moved on to the History of Science, Archaeology and Linguistics. He spent the first part of his career working on building sites as a carpenter and joiner, and it was not until he was approaching his forties that he began to focus on making artwork. His first major solo show, at the Rainy Day Gallery in Penzance in 2007, included a painting seven metres long entitled Journey to the Stars. Over his career he continued to push the scale of his paintings towards the truly monumental and began to experiment with architectural glass and tapestry. His final exhibition, In the Tracks of the Yellow Dog, was held at the New Craftsman Gallery in St Ives in September 2016, the same month that Matthew died. New Craftsman also held a retrospective of his work, titled Faster than Words, Older than Thought, in 2018.