Page 9 - Art First: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: 2014

In 1949 Barns-Graham made her renowned journey to Switzer land’s Grindelwald
Glacier. The result ing drawings, offsets and paintings that evolved from this forma -
tive experience estab lished her as one of St Ives’ most significant artists, and her
glacier pictures are still highly sought after. The ice forms in the glacier paintings

gradually developed into rock forms, while the under lying structure of her compos -
itions became increasingly reliant on the Golden Sec tion, a method of divi sion
in a mathe mat ically determined rectangle. Such divisions are often seen in the
under lying structure of the compositions, as an inherent component of the image.

The diagonal lines in the depths of Geoff and Scruffy Series–Red Line (1953) serve
here to illus trate her use of the Golden Section, underpin ning the design of the
linocut over which she has painted. The Geoff and Scruffy pictures, which recur
through the 1960s to the 1980s, con sist of two main forms, one oblong, the other
half-moon, linked by two lines and deriving origin ally from drawings done during
World War II of men painting buoys (a point made by Lynne Green in A studio life).
The shape was simplified, with the half moon echoing the shape of Porthmeor
beach, cut by the sea.

Barns-Graham’s circumstances changed significantly in 1963, which stimulated
an important shift in her art. Her marriage to David Lewis was annulled (they had
been apart since 1957) bringing a sense of closure to the separation, and she
pur chased a new studio residence in St Ives, No.1 Barnaloft in the same year. The
secur ity and independ ence this provided was exactly what she needed to continue
with her work. Now she was free to embark on a completely new series of paint ings
that ‘represented an engagement with the science of painting: with colour theory
(the balance and dynamic interaction of hue against hue), and with the interaction
of simple geometric form (the square and the circle) in replication and in evolving
relationship’. (Lynne Green, op cit., p.183) This is the start of the Order and Disorder
theme that constituted her main output for over a decade.

In her own words from a statement made in 1989, Barns-Graham wrote:
‘I tend to work in themes, some of them lasting me for years as I can
return to a theme again and again; for instance the abstracted
glaciers, rock forms, line motifs, abstract reliefs, squares and circles,
and painted constructions’.