Barns-Graham,Switzerlandand Italy

W Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Inspirational Journeys Willhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Barns-Graham drawing, Sant’Elia,Sicily,1955 Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Inspirational Journeys Barns-Graham at Warbeth,Orkney,1985 WilhelminaBarns-Graham Inspirational Journeys Willhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Barns-Graham, Sicilly, 1955 Foreword As an artist, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was intensely aware of the nuanced world around her, as attentive to the smallest of details as she was to the broad sweep of her environ - ment. From a child she had an acute sensitivity to the subtleties of form and colour, and how they are revealed, modulated and changed by light and shadow. As this exhibition shows, throughout her life she was engaged by the structure (outer and inner) of the visible world and by the potential of line, pure geometric form and subtle variations in colour hue, to convey emotion and felt responses. Whatever her means, she sought to encapsulate and distill the totality of her experience. Barns-Graham’s inventiveness and immediacy of response to new stimuli are perhaps most evident in the art that resulted from a dramatic change of scene–when she travel led both within the British Isles and abroad. These encounters with the new and the unex - pected are the focus of Inspirational Journeys. When consider ing her life’s story, it is clear that it was founded, in childhood, on a recurring pattern of movement from one place to another. It was not therefore out of character, that for most of her adult life, the artist travelled seasonally between homes and studios in St Ives, Cornwall and St Andrews in Scotland. New themes and sequences of work emerged in response to this rhythmic change of location, refective of the unique nature of each place: and so it was when she embarked on more adventurous journeys. The exhibition demonstrates that travel provided Barns-Graham with refreshment of inspiration and renewed vigour of invention. Diferent experiences and unfamil iar sub jects were embraced as starting points from which to explore her consistent interest in the essentially abstract, formal qualities of natural and man-made form. The artist’s travels abroad began in earnest as a student and then as a young artist eager to explore countries and locations that were long-established destinations for artists–Italy and its cities among them. These early journeys were usually made with the intention to work– specifcally to draw. For this was a foundational disci pline instilled in her at Edinburgh Col - lege of Art. With the possible exception of one visit to Orkney, when she occupied a studio in Strom ness, later sojourns were plan ned as holiday retreats. Nonetheless she travelled prepared to work–art was the language with which she explored the discover ies of travel. wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 355 The artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the forms and contours of the earth’s surface is evident, as is her fascination with its more intimate, internal structure–revealed by both natural and human agency, as with the clay extraction she drew at Chiusure in Tuscany. A defning moment in her creative engagement with natural interior form occurred whilst climbing the Grindelwald Glacier during a visit to the Swiss Bernese Alps, in 1949. The pale transparency of ice disclosed to her the deep inner geometries of the glacier, the trajectories of rifts and cracks, tracing its melt and refreeze, the constant movement, expansion and contraction. The works of art inspired by glacial formation were seminal to the artist’s career and reputa tion, as she embarked on an extensive series of images, in diferent media that are painterly equivalents of three-dimensional sculptural form. Arguably, the visit to Grindelwald provided Barns-Graham with a subject that is unique in the history of British twentieth-century art. During the late 1950s the artist’s palette responded to the warm, intense and muted colours of Spain and the Balearic Islands. In Ibiza and Formentera she captured the abstract qualities of indigenous architecture and landscape. Much later in her life the uniformly angular ‘pavement’ rock formations of Stromness and Yesnaby in Orkney, initiated a prolonged series of paintings and ever more inventive collages: rifs and variations on a geological theme. Later still, several visits to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands introduced Barns-Graham to the other worldly formations and colours of a volcanic landscape. These journeys led once more to a substantial sequence of works, primarily on paper, the most dramatic perhaps being those on black paper, which echo the famous black beaches and vineyards of the island. This touring exhibition is one in a series initiated by the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust that focuses on particular subjects and themes within the diversity of the artist’s work. In so doing they ofer the opportunity for a wider audience to explore the variety of her interests and preoccupations throughout what was a long and constantly inventive working life. Lynne Green 365 Barns-Graham drawing, Syracuse, Sicily,1955 A new involvement in form Barns-Graham,Switzerlandand Italy ‘We are concerned too much with forming fnal opinions and too little with being sensitive about what we see and involving ourselves in it.’ 1 Inspirational journeys form a recurring thread in the history of artists’ lives and careers. They suggest the efects of getting away from one’s usual place and the positive changes this can bring, especially to future work. Travelling has enabled countless people, including artists, to escape or transcend−temporarily at least not only their homes and homelands, but also their habits or routines, social status, world views, families and friends. Travelling has also brought many closer to home, increasingly appreciative of their home lives and ‘norm’.The lines above, written by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in a diary entry recording an Italian journey during the early 1950s, show that Barns-Graham was concerned, especi ally while she was away from home, with enjoying a sense of freedom from judgements and an almost meditative openness to her senses, as well as her inner experiences of the landscapes she encountered. It is easy to take for granted that Barns-Graham enjoyed her visits to particular places, among them Switzerland, Italy, Lanzarote, and Orkney. One can assume from this list, furthermore, that she was fascinated by the look and feel of land - scapes that spokeof the earth’s transformation over time.The terrainsof these places display their own geological shifts, due to erosion, temperature changes, quarry - ing or other means. Barns-Graham was also attracted to other kinds of struc tures within places, namely the composition of towns and architectural environ ments made as people slotted into the natural world. Her choice of subjects, whether natural or man-made, was shaped by an artistic predilection for exploring groups 385 of shapes on the verge between order and disorder. Often, patterns with the landscape’s forms or architecture seem to have arisen naturally, without mathematical formulae. This essay focuses on Barns-Graham’s journeys to Switzerland and Italy, seen in the context of her earlier life and learnings. Her trip to Switzerland in 1949 was the most signifcant holiday for her developing artistic career. Visits to Italy between 1953 and 1955 resulted in another substantial body of work, though in many ways this also grew out of her experiences of Switzerland. This study aims to refect the inspirational signifcance of these places while retaining the complexity of their efects as they connected with Barns-Graham’s previous and future experiences both at home and elsewhere. Barns-Graham’s journey to Switzerland in 1949 came at a particularly important time in her life and career, and it is bound up with her experiences of the previ ous nine years in St Ives in west Cornwall. Arriving in St Ives in March 1940, at the age of 27, the young artist from Scotland felt the instability and newness of her posi tion creating an urge in her to make something creatively with her hands. From her new home she wrote in her diary, ‘My mind just seems in an awful whirl & I don’t know how I can make anything of it. I feel almost as if I wanted to get hold of diferent textures of paints & materials of paint & place them one upon the other with my hands.’2 From St Ives she developed new strategies for depicting the world around her. She soaked in visual impressions and captured these in her notebooks, which are littered with detailed descriptions of colours, harmonies and characters. She also set to work on a list, titled ‘subjects noted in St Ives’, which she could turn to for reference and inspiration over the following years. Such planning may have been a response to the prohibition of painting outdoors in coastal commu n ities during the war. This list included particular views of the town and sections of it, as well as objects, people and kinds of tree. wilhelmina barns-graham / inspirational journeys 395 Fig.1 Pine Tree,Carbis Bay,1943 pen and ink on paper (dimensions/location unknown) Barns-Graham’s notes also show she was observing her surroundings with an eye for abstract qualities, especially colour, rhythm and form. After coming across ‘2 interesting decaying tin mines’ along the coast that she decided she’d like to paint, she wrote simply, ‘Stonework & shapes.’ Visiting the fshing port of Newlyn, she remembered her interest in ‘the quarry on approaching it & the interesting shapes & colours in passing’.3 In addition to the subject-matter available in her new environment, living in proximity to fellow artists in St Ives during these years encouraged Barns- Graham to experiment more with the rhythms of colour, form and line.

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