| Description | This print features a warm, yet muted colour scheme, with pale shades that emphasise the use of black in the foreground. The image is a typical example of Barns-Graham's print work. It utilises simple shapes and paint-like quality to present an abstract, stripped down version where objective meaning is removed and subjective meaning is the only way to interpret the remaining elements.
The work was printed by Carol Robertson at Graal Press in 2006. Barns-Graham had built a solid working relationship with Carol Robertson and Robert Adam, its founders, since 1998 until her death in 2004.
Screenprinting was her favourite form of printing. After a period of overseeing all stages of printing including the verification of proofs, she realised that once she and the printmaker understood each other properly, there was no need for her to oversee each stage of the process. The technique of screenprinting was also mirrored in the way she created paintings on paper, working on several works from a series at once.
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was born in St Andrews and attended Edinburgh College of Art 1932-7. She moved to St Ives in the 1940's where she joined the artist societies of Newlyn, St Ives and Penwith and became friends with Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. A trip to Switzerland in 1948 inspired her Glacier Series and further significant travel to Italy in 1955 highlighed her strong draughtsmanship. She divided her time between St Andrews and St Ives from 1960 and produced various significant series of abstract works from the geometric to the more organic. |
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