JOHN CECIL STEPHENSON (1889-1965)

Vortex No. 2 relates to another painting of 1939, Vortex I, which Simon Guthrie describes as 'a design of seven curved triangles grouped together in the middle of the picture area'. He continues, 'Vortex I reintroduces some of the novelties seen in some of the 1938 crayon sketches. In these the curved triangles are either open, or filled with a solid colour, or there is a marginal colour and a central colour, and this provides great variety. Vortex I and II are extremely tightly composed pictures. Compared to the relaxed grandeur of the 1937 pictures, they are like a clenched fist, the design crystallised into a close-knit group of forms' (S. Guthrie, The Life and Art of John Cecil Stephenson, Grange-over-Sands, 1997, p. 83).