Drawings and Studies

For Barns-Graham, drawing was an important part of the working process; “I have sessions of drawing and consider it important to make studies, to develop one’s awareness of to inner perception....I attempt to seek out sculptural, architectural and linear qualities.....always to study the function of forms and formations, drawing with simplicity. I get at the real essence of things which can be as miraculous as anything devised by the imagination.... ”. ¹ Nonetheless, the drawings were not studies for particular paintings.  “I seldom work from my drawings. The discipline used releases me in my paintings, to work more freely, expand with ideas and imagination involving joy in colour, texture and harmony, I start creating (sic)”. ¹

The examples of drawings currently on the site represent the periods where there are more extant drawings than from other times; Glacier studies of the late 1940s, the Italian drawings of the mid 1950s, land- and seascape line studies made throughout the 1970s and 1980s, drawings of St Ives and Stromness from 1984-5, and the Lanzarote lava studies from 1989 to 1993.

In addition, some developmental works deriving from the volcanic explorations of Lanzarote have been added here. These do not represent the fulmination of these explorations but they do take the ideas seen in the chalk and charcoal drawings a stage further.

For availability please contact Art First on info@artfirst.co.uk or The Scottish Gallery on info@scottish-gallery.co.uk

Note: 1  W. Barns-Graham, Some Thoughts on Drawing, from exhibition catalogue ‘W.Barns-Graham Drawings’, Crawford Arts Centre, St. Andrews, 1992, p.9