He exhibited in the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936, and was most impressed with the work of Picasso, and particularly by Guernica when he saw it in London in 1938. From 1940-45 he was an Official War Artist and drew evocative scenes of bomb damage to buildings, as well as mining and quarrying in Wales and Cornwall. His first religious commission was in 1944, a painting for St.Matthew’s Church, Northampton: Sutherland chose to paint a Crucifixion. In 1950-1 he painted the Origins of the Land for the Festival of Britain, and in 1952 designed the huge tapestry of Christ the Redeemer Enthroned in Glory in the Teramorph for the new Coventry Cathedral.

His colour tended to be sharp and acid, and his use of paint dry in texture; his handling of form owed much to the harsher images of metamorphosis by Picasso.