Twenty-five Years in the Making: Looking back at the first edition of a studio life
In anticipation of the release of the new edition of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: a studio life by Lynne Green, we have headed into the archive to learn more about the production of the first edition of the monograph in the 1990s. The third edition will be released on 19th June marking twenty-five years since its initial release.
The covers of the three editions of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: a studio life by Lynne Green
Alongside talking with Green in person, over the phone, and via correspondence to ensure that her biography was recorded, Barns-Graham created a screenprint with Graal Press to accompany the limited edition of A Studio Life. She recorded this process in her diaries:
23rd August 1999
Studio playing with ideas for book silk screen. Working on 2 ideas & drew diagram on film paper.
24th August 1999
Trying colour on one of the films book idea – rather a problem as such a horrible shape 29 x 24cms.
25th August 1999
Studio still working on ideas for book but then began small one of “Another Time”, big print design & thinking of an eclipse one.
26th August 1999
Painted the book size with margin small red as “Another Time” – but got a bit fed up with it.
28th August 1999
Worked in studio again but guess I’m trying too hard, print for the book. An unpleasant size.
Millennium Series Red, 2000, screenprint, edition of 100, 22 x 28 cm
Barns-Graham traditionally enjoyed setting rules for herself in her studio practice. In the 1990s, she reflected that during the 1950s “I restricted my palette to earth colours.” Later in the 1960s, in her series “Things of a Kind, Order and Disorder” she often used mathematical rules to define the proportions of the shapes in her compositions. However, it is clear from her diary that she found the limitations imposed by the size of the paper surprisingly challenging.
Lynne Green and WBG walking in a snowy Balmungo garden, January 1998, BGP/2/123/5.. Photo: Rowan James
In an oral history interview conducted with Lynne Green in 2023, the author shed light on the initial stages of research that informed the writing of the book. She recalled that:
We would sit wherever we were. I was there a lot in St Ives and a lot in St Andrews. And I think the Diaries were mostly kept in St Andrews, but she [Wilhelmina Barns-Graham] would sit with me with a diary of a particular period. And she’d start to read it. And I was taking notes madly and she wouldn’t let me use a recorder. And then she’d say that’s enough, and she’d shut it. Let’s go for a walk or whatever.
WBG amongst stacks of artworks at Balmungo, 1982, BGP/3/11/26. Photo: Antonia Reeve
As well as interviewing Willie and her colleagues from art college, St Ives, and beyond, Lynne Green had the task of delving into the huge volumes of artworks that had been produced over the years. She remembered accessing these at Barns-Graham’s St Andrews home with the help of Rowan James, Barns-Graham’s Studio Manager:
But I couldn’t have done it without Rowan because there were – Balmungo was a sea of work and every bedroom had been taken over except the two that they occupied. And Rowan had, you know, had built or had built with alongside her these racks and things and so. We just pulled things out.
These two quotes give a small sense of the years of work that Lynne Green put into writing the first and most extensive monograph of Wilhelmina Barns Graham.
We are looking forward to celebrating the release of the new, third edition this summer.