A PIONEER of technical innovations in printmaking is being celebrated at a special exhibition in Glasgow.
The show at Glasgow Print Studio (GPS) will also be the first time the prints and paintings of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham have been together on public display.
Barns-Graham, who was born in St Andrews in 1912, was first and foremost a painter but made prints throughout her working life, trying many different methods such as etching, linocut, lithography and screen printing. All her published prints were made in collaboration with master printmakers, their technical expertise enabling her to translate her way of working into a different medium.
During the last 10 or so years of her long artistic career, printmaking became a central part of Barns-Graham’s practice, particularly after 1998 when she began working with Graal Press in Roslin, near Edinburgh.
The new exhibition examines for the first time the dynamic relationship between the two distinct areas of Barns-Graham’s practice by showing related paintings, prints and overpainted prints together.
“Working alongside master printmakers, Barns-Graham was a true pioneer of technical innovations in printmaking,” said Naomi Brown, marketing officer at Glasgow Print Studio.
“She experimented with a variety of new techniques and materials that allowed her to create prints with intensity of colour and precision of design.
“We are excited to showcase her remarkable prints alongside her joyous paintings for the first time here at GPS and we are delighted to be collaborating with the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust to launch this exhibition here in Glasgow.”
Trust director Rob Airey added: “Printmaking was a central part of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s practice, particularly in the last ten years of her career, during which she produced a significant number of screenprints with the Midlothian-based printers Graal Press.
“The Trust is delighted then to be showing both prints and paintings, from this important period of the artist’s career, together for the first time at Glasgow Print Studio, one of the most important centres for printmaking in Scotland.”
Barns-Graham, who died in 2004, was made a CBE in 2001.
Through her will, she set up a charitable trust to better preserve her artistic legacy and to provide bursaries for art students. She had been helped by a scholarship from Edinburgh College of Art in June 1935, with more following in each of the subsequent five years.
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Painting and Printing runs until October 1 and is free to view.
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