At the Slade he met Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, moving to north Essex to work more closely with them.
He was one of more than 60 artists commissioned by the Government and financed by the Pilgrim Trust to record the face of England and Wales before development or wartime destruction changed it.
Kenneth Rowntree concentrated on capturing the essential character of old buildings and interiors in Bedfordshire, Essex, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Wales.
[2] In 1951, he completed a major mural, Freedom, for The Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion at the Festival of Britain.
It was at Newcastle that he became receptive to various modernist idioms, such as assemblage and constructivist forms, and incorporated them in his own work.