by Leigh Patterson
Figures in a Landscape documents Barbara Hepworth as she sculpts, set against the otherworldly Cornwall coastal landscape where she created art later in her life amid “sunlight and leaves, flowers and sliding shadows.” The 1953 British Film Institute documentary captures the artist’s secluded garden and nearby beach as the setting for her process.
Intuitive, confident, experienced hands, carving down raw wood into refined sculpture. A testimony to expertise through repetition, this portrait of the artist allows the dance between landscape, form, and idea to organically overlap.
"Carving to me is more interesting than modeling, because there is an unlimited variety of materials from which to draw inspiration. Each material demands a particular treatment and there are an infinite number of subjects in life each to be re-created in a particular material. In fact, it would be possible to carve the same subject in a different stone each time, throughout life, without a repetition of form.” — Barbara Hepworth
