Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was born in St Andrews and attended Edinburgh College of Art 1932-7. She moved to St Ives in the 1940s, where she joined the artist societies of Newlyn, St Ives and Penwith and became friends with Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. A trip to Switzerland in 1948 inspired her Glacier Series and further significant travel to Italy in 1955 highlighted her strong draughtsmanship. She divided her time between St Andrews and St Ives from 1960 and produced various significant series of abstract works from the geometric to the more organic. Later in her life, her work took on a colourful, painterly flourishing in tandem with magnificent printmaking with Graal Press, consolidating her place as a major Modern British figure.