Khaki and Emerald Green

Disillusioned with life in St Ives, Frost and his family moved to Banbury in 1963. William Scott helped him get a part-time teaching job at Coventry School of Art, before he took the post as Visiting Lecturer in Fine Art at Reading University, where he would remain until retiring as full Professor in 1981. Far removed from the quiet rustic life of Cornwall, Frost found himself in an urban environment that provided him with a new set of motifs such as lorries and road signs, which he photographed and began to incorporate into his work. Another important influence at this time was a visit to Compton Wynyates, the Marquis of Northampton's country house, where he was shown the flags carried into the battle of Edge Hill during the Civil War, which were covered with black chevrons and blue circles. David Lewis comments, 'Somehow the heraldic imagery inspired by the Compton Wynyates banner and the commanding brashness of road signs were brought together in new, harsher shapes and colours in the paintings of the early 1960s. The Midlands were already exerting an influence towards broader, more open and at the same time more rigorously simplified paintings' (see D. Lewis, Terry Frost, Aldershot, 2000, p.107).