This display acknowledges three of O'Malley's friends and peers in St Ives, with whom he was connected from the late1950s – Bryan Wynter, Patrick Heron and Peter Lanyon.

Like a number of his fellow artists working in and around the artist colony, O'Malley was soon inspired to explore abstract painting in relation to the experience of the Cornish landscape. Stark monochromatic harmonies typify his paintings of the early 1960s, following his move out of St Ives to a studio further down the Penwith peninsular at Trevaylor.

Consolidating a distinctly Irish sensibility, the stark mood of the paintings is further symbolic of the loss of his close friend and advocate, Peter Lanyon, who died after a gliding accident in 1964. O'Malley particularly identified with the Celtic spirit Lanyon conveyed in his landscapes, relating specific histories to universal themes.