Painter’s progress

Andrew Lambirth talks to Alan Reynolds, who abandoned a lucrative career as a landscape painter to follow his instincts towards abstraction

At the age of 85, Alan Reynolds is enjoying a sudden and well-deserved flurry of interest in his work. A superb monograph has just been published on his art, written by Michael Harrison, director of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, and to launch the book there’s an exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art (23 Dering Street, W1, until 26 March). This is Reynolds’s seventh solo show at the gallery, which has successfully represented him since 1978, and which has been responsible for promoting his work in Europe. The new work consists of white reliefs and pencil drawings, which continue Reynolds’s exploration of the dynamic relationships between the horizontal and the vertical. The work can look a trifle austere at first glance, but the exquisitely balanced tonal drawings display a lyricism that leads you to the heart of his endeavour.