Two giants of Penwith society

Currently honouring two of its prominent members from the past, the historic Penwith Society of Arts in St Ives is presenting exhibitions by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) and Breon O’Casey (1928-2011) in the Corner Gallery within its Penwith Gallery.

Entitled Cornish Coasts, the exhibition by the former is the second year-long show to be presented here by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, which came into being in 1987. Its director Rob Airey says: “This group of works picks up the theme of last year’s first display of 1940s St Ives, and demonstrates how the Cornish coast both in and beyond St Ives continued as a source of inspiration for her from the 1940s onwards. Both the built and the natural environment caught her attention.”

As the artist’s close friend and assistant Rowan James once said: “From the early 1960s she lived and worked for the rest of her life on the beach (Porthmeor) she loved. Always a source of inspiration, light reflecting off the ocean tides, the energy of the wind and waves, and the timeless shifting sands, were a continual fascination for her.”

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s Cornish Coasts can be seen in the Corner Gallery of the Penwith Gallery until September 2019.

Until the end of April 2019, her they are accompanied by a display of paintings by the multi-talented Breon O’Casey. An accomplished painter, jeweller, weaver, printmaker, engraver and sculptor, speaking of his paintings, he once said: “I’m an abstract painter, closer in my work to the older definition of a still life painter than to a landscape painter. A painter who works best in the confines of the studio and sees the world through a collection of pots and pans, apples and oranges, rather than fields, trees and skies.”

His work is characterised by simple forms and lines and a very personal imagery, that gives his birds, animals and figures a primitive and mystical presence. All the pictures in this exhibition have been kindly supplied by the artist’s family, and are for sale. One who, in the 1970s, played a major role in the development of the Penwith Gallery, for ten years O’Casey was the society’s vice chair. The society’s present chair John Piper, recalls his first visit to the gallery in 1964: “One couldn’t help but be confronted by the large canvases which Breon O’Casey. Often unprimed, with a limited use of colour and simple shapes – the works had a raw elemental feel.”

Splendid tributes to two artists who served the breakaway Penwith Society of Artists so well during its early and often turbulent years.