Prunella Clough studied painting at Chelsea and Camberwell Schools of Art, holding her first solo exhibition at the Leger Gallery, London, in 1947 and exhibiting with the WIAC in 1948. Her early work combined a Neo-Romantic ‘spirit of place’ with a Social Realist concern with the lives and landscapes of working people. She was also interested in Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Bypass I is one of a group of works from 1959–60 which mark her move into abstraction and demonstrates the many sources from which she drew inspiration, suggesting both the cellular forms of an organism seen under a microscope and the aerial perspective of looking down on a landscape or map.