Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004)

Barns-Graham was preoccupied with exploring speed and energy and the relationship between stillness and movement in her paintings. The present work is from her Day/Night Series of the early 1980s. Lynne Green comments on a larger version of this work: 'The ethereal quality of the disc-spheres ... is conjured by a thin wash of white pigment that swirls at the painting's centre. The circular forms - two barely discernible as they enter (or leave) at the extreme right- have the eerie presence of planets floating in an unknown solar system ... In ordered ranks of carefully calculated colour gradations the artist exploits the properties of 'colour value'- the combined effect of individual colour or hue, its brightness (tone), and saturation (intensity)- as well as colour's apparent 'temperature', 'weight' and 'energy'' (see L. Green, W. Barns-Graham: A Studio Life, Aldershot, 2001, p. 205).