In this jewel-like study, Diana Neale captures the mystical intensity of Latin American volcanic painters who saw mountains as both geological features and spiritual symbols. The azure cone rising from earthen plains reminds one of Rufino Tamayo's legendary Paisaje del Paricutín (1947), where Mexico's newest volcano became "a Surrealist metaphor for the unconscious and an indigenist icon." Like Tamayo, who mixed oil with sand to "materialise the theme of a soot-filled landscape," Neale uses mineral-rich pigments that seem quarried directly from the earth. Her technique evokes the Ecuadorian master Rafael Troya, who accompanied German volcanologists to paint Cotopaxi and Chimborazo "full of colour and life," documenting those sacred peaks where, as the Quechua name suggests, "neck meets moon."

The cross-hatched incised surface texture echoes the printmaking traditions that carried these volcanic visions across continents, while the perfect square format transforms this "volcano" into something approaching Joaquín Torres-García's mystical constructivism. Here is the ancient chalk down reimagined through South American eyes, where every hill becomes Chimborazo and sunset light carries the "romance" that Walter J. Turner found in those legendary names: "Chimborazo, Cotopaxi / They had stolen my soul away!" Neale proves that visionary landscape recognises no border, that the same forces which drive Andean peaks skyward can transform the gentlest English countryside into something altogether more primal and eternal.