Page 11 - Art First: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: 2014

During the 1970s Barns-Graham’s variations continued to evolve.
Family Series (1967), demonstrates an idea visited briefly but not
devel oped until a decade later. This partic ular gouache on paper
is the direct ante cedent of the extended Family Series that Barns-
Graham took up in earnest in 1981 ( example shown left). Here
we see a pref er ence for rectang ular shapes rather than squares
and the elon gated, oblong forms even tually turned into the thick,

single brush strokes of pure colour which ignited the sur faces

of her cele brated Scorpio Series of the 1990s. The move ment of
more softly brushed coloured forms over a single coloured back -
ground first seen in the rare canvas Untitled (Passing Forms Series)
of 1958 is another recurring character istic in her very late works,
to be seen in the exhibition In Perspective.

Expanding Red, Orange and Green on Black (1980) intro duces
yet another element, in which oblong and rhomboid shapes
are given the hard edge treatment of paper cutouts. The strident
colour and the determinedly modernist conception reminds
us of the historical context in which Barns-Graham had been
working for decades. The rich black background is divided into
two areas of subtly differ entiated blacks over which the forms jig.
This approach to making upright forms dance across the picture
plane was another theme to which Barns-Graham returned and
reinvented twenty years later in the Scorpio Series.

Barns-Graham was absolutely consistent in the way she pro gres -
sed in her painting. Not only did she have a remark able ability
to invent and re-invent ideas in an innovative fashion, but the
discipline ‘of the mind’, as Mel Gooding described it, and the dedi -
cation she brought to her practice over six decades were also
critical to her sus tained artistic evolution and her distin guished
position in the development of British modern art.

Geoffrey Bertram
Bridal Party 2 (Family Series)
1987, oil on hardboard, 39 x 53 cm CHAIRMAN, BARNS-GRAHAM CHARITABLE TRUST