Page 30 - Art First: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: 2014

This aspect of her art is detectable through out her career; ‘I tend to work in themes’,
as she said. Barns-Graham fully explored ideas, letting them take her where they
would, gradually re-shap ing them, pushing them, in new directions.

By far the majority of Barns-Graham’s late paintings were made on Arches paper
with relatively few works done on canvas. Those canvases she did paint tended
to be of a similar size to that of the works on paper, as with Untitled (2003). None the -
less, on occasion she indicated an ambition to paint on a bigger scale that sat well
beside the art of her peers–Terry Frost and John Hoyland in particular. Large works
do impress, and there is a general tendency to believe that a large canvas is more
important than a small one, and that as a rule, work on canvas is more signifi cant
than work on paper. However, during the 1990s, when Barns-Graham was in her
eighties, the physical strength required to make big paintings on canvas was all
but beyond her diminutive frame and fragile health. Despite these disadvantages,

Untitled, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 60.5 x 91 cm