the influence of kurt schwitter's collages and constructions has never been greater, and ian walton and russell mills are two artists who continue to find the german's art and life a rich seam of inspiration. walton now lives a few doors from schwitter's old house in ambleside, in the english lake district, and both artists have made many visits to the area. in 1987, they constructed a massive stoneand wood sculpture in the nearby forest of grizedale as a memorial to schwitters and separatly, in their own pictures and objects, they continue to explore many of his principles. walton and mills, like schwitters, practice an art in which the most humble and unworthy materials are combined and transfigured by the force of the artists eye. walton's precisely descriptive titles might suggest studies of particular landscapes, but they are closer in spirit to visual diaries in which the artist records the emotions and sensations that the places evoked. like the landscape itself, his surfaces are eroded, corroded, weathered and stained. walton makes no sketches before he begins and rarely starts with a blank canvas. his pictures are improvisations in which one set of marks will lead to another and mills is similarly open to the play of chance, moderated, in his case, by rather more literary sensibility. yet he, too, is a kind of artist-geologist, probing the composition of the landscape and savouring ist textures - or perhaps an alchemist, transforming base materials into treasure. riven by furrows and shot through with colour, mills' surfaces suggest not so much the ravages of climate acting from above as the release of energies exploding from within. in both artists the grandeur of the english landscape shapes an essentially romantic vision.

rick poynor

all images reproduced with kind permission of russell mills and ian walton. copyright of the text by rick poynor