00:00:26.080 --> 00:00:27.960
[Dramatic string music]

00:00:54.400 --> 00:00:55.680
[Music fades out]

00:00:55.760 --> 00:00:57.880
[Snow crunching underfoot]

00:01:19.880 --> 00:01:21.080
[Single drum sounds]

00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:24.560
[Gentle string music]

00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:27.960
This is the story of a woman.

00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:32.480
- What do we see here?
- [Chatter]

00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:35.560
NARRATOR: An old lady
with palm trees in the background.

00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:36.640
[Music ends]

00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:38.000
Maybe she's on holiday?

00:01:38.920 --> 00:01:42.480
Sensible overcoat.
She's not dressed for sunshine.

00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:47.000
A bulging pocket.

00:01:48.920 --> 00:01:50.360
And comfy shoes.

00:01:57.080 --> 00:01:58.200
Here she is again.

00:01:58.960 --> 00:02:02.320
Unglamorous again.
Bulging pocket again.

00:02:03.080 --> 00:02:05.080
Green all-weather coat.

00:02:06.240 --> 00:02:07.840
And muddy wellies now.

00:02:11.200 --> 00:02:13.680
Are we getting a picture of her yet?

00:02:16.440 --> 00:02:18.520
Practical, outdoorsy.

00:02:19.680 --> 00:02:21.240
In her 70s, maybe.

00:02:22.720 --> 00:02:26.680
Do we think we can guess
what TV shows she watches?

00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:29.640
What magazines she reads?

00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:32.080
Her hair.

00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:37.320
The sort of haircut you might expect
from a woman in those coats.

00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:41.240
And glasses too, as we might expect.

00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:44.760
But then we see where she lives.

00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:46.080
[Birds chirp]

00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:51.000
What happens to our image of her now?

00:02:51.600 --> 00:02:55.760
To our sense that
she's conventional, outdoorsy,

00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:59.440
do we add that she's... wealthy?

00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:03.440
A fancy house, indeed.

00:03:04.880 --> 00:03:06.480
And what about this picture?

00:03:07.640 --> 00:03:11.080
She's got honorary degrees and a CBE.

00:03:11.160 --> 00:03:14.560
So was accomplished, recognised, too.

00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:19.320
Are we learning much from these images?

00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:22.840
Or are we projecting onto them? Onto her?

00:03:29.880 --> 00:03:31.360
She has a hammer now.

00:03:32.760 --> 00:03:34.680
And striking glasses.

00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:38.000
[Microphone rustling]

00:03:40.920 --> 00:03:44.200
And in these three pictures
we notice something.

00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:46.480
The same necklace.

00:03:49.200 --> 00:03:51.840
It's like concord with droplets.

00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:53.360
Or something Turkish.

00:03:55.280 --> 00:03:57.560
She wore it very often.

00:03:58.880 --> 00:03:59.880
Why?

00:04:00.360 --> 00:04:04.840
Do the comfy shoes
and the old lady glasses disguise

00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:05.920
who she is?

00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:07.760
Where she's been?

00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:13.080
[Inquisitive music]

00:04:18.280 --> 00:04:21.760
TILDA SWINTON [Voice over]: "A little
circus came to St Ives on the island."

00:04:21.840 --> 00:04:24.760
"It was a strange sight
to see two grey elephants

00:04:24.840 --> 00:04:26.920
sauntering in the dusty heat."

00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:29.920
- "Just the colour of grey socks."
- [Seagulls call]

00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:33.040
"I remember afterwards
seeing the huge grey elephants

00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:34.720
walking on the islands."

00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:37.280
"Exactly the dry stone colour
of the rocks."

00:04:45.760 --> 00:04:50.640
NARRATOR: So we look again at the woman
and start to see how she sees.

00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:54.400
- Elephant. Socks. Rocks.
- [Music continues]

00:04:54.880 --> 00:04:59.560
Three things that have probably
never before been together.

00:05:01.520 --> 00:05:04.320
She put them together in her diary.

00:05:04.400 --> 00:05:07.200
In her head. In her brain.

00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:11.800
[Single drum sounds]

00:05:16.440 --> 00:05:19.360
[Faint jingling]

00:05:26.760 --> 00:05:30.240
This is the story of the brain
of a forgotten visionary.

00:05:30.880 --> 00:05:33.280
A feisty, under-valued,

00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:38.480
driven, obsessive,
sickly 20th century artist,

00:05:38.560 --> 00:05:40.680
painter, drawer,

00:05:40.760 --> 00:05:42.320
abstractor,

00:05:42.400 --> 00:05:45.320
and traveller, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:47.480
[Erratic piano music]

00:05:51.840 --> 00:05:55.280
LYNNE: We first met at
a private view of one of her exhibitions.

00:05:55.760 --> 00:05:58.080
I commissioned a piece on her.

00:05:59.040 --> 00:06:00.240
And she liked that.

00:06:02.360 --> 00:06:03.680
She was very beautiful.

00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:08.280
She was very vivacious
and she attracted people to her.

00:06:09.560 --> 00:06:11.920
And she knew her power.
She was aware of it.

00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:13.000
And she...

00:06:13.800 --> 00:06:15.880
was quite happy to use it sometimes.

00:06:17.240 --> 00:06:19.640
Her beauty was quite dramatic.

00:06:20.400 --> 00:06:23.080
She was a bit
like a flame to the moths, really.

00:06:23.160 --> 00:06:27.160
I know that the men in St Ives
were all attracted to her.

00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:29.480
And she had a great laugh.

00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:33.120
When you were with her

00:06:33.200 --> 00:06:36.200
and when you were talking
about her own art,

00:06:36.280 --> 00:06:40.120
it was captivating
and it was like holding your breath.

00:06:41.880 --> 00:06:43.840
Because she was so animated.

00:06:45.400 --> 00:06:47.040
She was a great flirter.

00:06:47.120 --> 00:06:49.880
She would've flirted with you. Absolutely.

00:06:49.960 --> 00:06:52.680
Outrageously. And you would've loved it.

00:06:53.640 --> 00:06:57.560
NARRATOR: Probably. I think we moved
in some of the same circles

00:06:57.640 --> 00:07:01.680
in the 1980s in Edinburgh
when I first started film-making.

00:07:02.520 --> 00:07:05.280
Did we ever brush shoulders
at an art opening?

00:07:06.240 --> 00:07:08.440
Am I at a distance from her?

00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:11.880
As I make this film will I get closer?

00:07:13.920 --> 00:07:16.040
Her brain grew in her foetus...

00:07:18.680 --> 00:07:20.280
which grew in her mother,

00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:21.840
also called Wilhelmina.

00:07:22.920 --> 00:07:25.840
A woman of minor Scottish gentry,

00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:29.480
who lived in St Andrews
in Fife in Scotland.

00:07:29.560 --> 00:07:30.560
[Wind blows]

00:07:34.840 --> 00:07:39.240 align:center line:8%
From her earliest years,
she was compelled by visual things.

00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:44.360
She was unstoppable.

00:07:44.440 --> 00:07:47.520
She saw unusual connections in the world.

00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.760 align:center line:8%
WILLIE: I started being interested
in things of a kind.

00:07:52.840 --> 00:07:54.280 align:center line:8%
In order and disorder.

00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:58.080 align:center line:8%
Loads of squares,
some touching each other.

00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:00.720
Some knocking each other.

00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:01.840
[Faint jingling]

00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:04.920
And that taught me the importance of

00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.440
what these things did,
how they moved, how they--

00:08:09.080 --> 00:08:13.000
What position they got into.
How it affected the others all round them.

00:08:13.080 --> 00:08:16.280
And I realised
that this is what happens in life.

00:08:16.360 --> 00:08:18.720
So I learned a great deal out of painting.

00:08:19.760 --> 00:08:22.720
Taught me a lot about life,
and life taught me about painting.

00:08:24.960 --> 00:08:26.800
There's one called Pilgrimage,

00:08:27.360 --> 00:08:29.000
erm, which is 1967,

00:08:29.080 --> 00:08:34.200
- and that is vermilion squares on brown.
- [squares thump heavily]

00:08:34.280 --> 00:08:37.800
And I, at that time,
was going on pilgrimages.

00:08:37.880 --> 00:08:38.880
And, uh...

00:08:39.560 --> 00:08:43.360
It's uh... they're sort of
marching along and out of the canvas.

00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:47.440
Some are touching,
some are together, some are, uh, tilted.

00:08:49.560 --> 00:08:53.280
NARRATOR: Her brain was part shaped
by her fierce father.

00:08:54.640 --> 00:08:56.000
[Striking piano music]

00:09:01.040 --> 00:09:05.560
At the dinner table he had a whip,
which he used when he disapproved.

00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:09.920
Like the icy threat in this movie.

00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:14.080
- Are they? Are they?
- NARRATOR: He was an obstacle.

00:09:14.160 --> 00:09:16.200
A block of Edwardian granite.

00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:20.040
He didn't want her to be an artist.

00:09:21.400 --> 00:09:23.400
Her brain was good at obstacles.

00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:26.760
At getting around things,
at jumping the fence.

00:09:27.480 --> 00:09:29.320
Escaping restrictions.

00:09:29.400 --> 00:09:30.480
[Scribbling]

00:09:30.560 --> 00:09:35.080
In her life, she kept finding versions
of the block of granite.

00:09:35.640 --> 00:09:40.520
Father figures.
Whips of sorts. And buttresses.

00:09:40.600 --> 00:09:42.160
[Scribbling and jingling]

00:09:47.880 --> 00:09:50.760
Men supported her and undermined her.

00:09:54.040 --> 00:09:56.600
Some art critics praised her work.

00:09:56.680 --> 00:09:58.280
Her way of seeing.

00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:03.720
But many told the story
of 20th century British art

00:10:04.520 --> 00:10:06.400
without mentioning her.

00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:14.440
A defended brain.

00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:18.920
A wary, self-reliant brain.

00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:22.640
A brain that jumped the fence.

00:10:27.040 --> 00:10:30.040
LYNNE: Willie's brain was unusual.
I thought about this.

00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:31.320
She had synaesthesia,

00:10:32.080 --> 00:10:34.800
which is something
that helped her enormously

00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:36.040
in her art

00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:38.400
and was very evident even as a child,

00:10:38.480 --> 00:10:40.800
because she had that connection between...

00:10:41.560 --> 00:10:44.800
colour and people, and colour and places.

00:10:44.880 --> 00:10:46.680
That's what's synaesthesia is.

00:10:46.760 --> 00:10:48.960
Kind of marrying these things together.

00:10:52.680 --> 00:10:56.160
NARRATOR: In her
letter-colour synaesthesia, E was...

00:10:56.240 --> 00:11:00.080
TILDA SWINTON [VO]: "...Light
Prussian blue fairly transparent."

00:11:02.120 --> 00:11:03.280
NARRATOR: F was...

00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:05.480
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"...rust vulnerable."

00:11:09.160 --> 00:11:11.840
LYNNE: She understood
that she was special,

00:11:12.720 --> 00:11:15.560
and she had a destiny
because she was special.

00:11:16.440 --> 00:11:19.280
One of the things
that she talked about a lot with me

00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:21.040
was the fact that everything,

00:11:21.480 --> 00:11:25.280
as a child,
was about colour and form and line.

00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:26.800
How bright the red was.

00:11:27.880 --> 00:11:30.840
About the colours of pebbles,

00:11:31.400 --> 00:11:35.840
the form of the sea at St Andrews,
how has the ripples worked.

00:11:35.920 --> 00:11:38.200
- [Jingling continues]
- [Water bubbling]

00:11:45.560 --> 00:11:47.240
[Choir vocalising softly]

00:11:52.880 --> 00:11:57.640
♪ Agnus Dei...

00:12:00.280 --> 00:12:02.080
[Gentle breeze blows]

00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:13.320
NARRATOR: Here she takes
a verbal prayer,

00:12:13.400 --> 00:12:15.440
Agnus Dei, The Lamb of God,

00:12:15.520 --> 00:12:18.760
turns each letter
into the corresponding colour...

00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:24.880
And then spells out the prayer
in a grid of hues.

00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:28.360
CHOIR: ♪ Agnus...

00:12:29.240 --> 00:12:30.680
♪ Dei ♪

00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:35.040
[Choir continues]

00:12:37.640 --> 00:12:38.640
[Pages rustle]

00:13:08.160 --> 00:13:09.840
[Wind blows outside car]

00:13:20.600 --> 00:13:21.760
[Rain falling]

00:13:23.160 --> 00:13:26.440
WILLIE:
I went to St Ives in 1940, sometimes,

00:13:26.520 --> 00:13:29.360
for two or three reasons.

00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:33.360
One was I held a travelling scholarship
from the Edinburgh College of Art.

00:13:36.240 --> 00:13:40.840
LYNNE: Willie needed to escape
from family and Scotland.

00:13:40.920 --> 00:13:42.120
[Choir continues]

00:13:44.400 --> 00:13:46.320
But not just because of St Ives,

00:13:46.400 --> 00:13:48.840
but because there was already forming

00:13:49.560 --> 00:13:53.120
a modernist group,
partly because of the war.

00:13:55.040 --> 00:13:56.360
[Choir fades out]

00:13:56.440 --> 00:13:58.560
There was something
about the light, as well.

00:13:58.640 --> 00:14:01.960
As soon as she got there,
she realized that St Ives, its light,

00:14:02.040 --> 00:14:04.280
was very similar to St Andrews.

00:14:04.360 --> 00:14:05.480
[Waves crashing]

00:14:08.800 --> 00:14:11.920
WILLIE:
I met a lady in Carbis Bay

00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:14.680
almost immediately on my arrival,

00:14:14.760 --> 00:14:20.160
who was very surprised at my wandering
about Cornwall by myself during the war.

00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:21.400
[Inquisitive music]

00:14:24.760 --> 00:14:28.360
NARRATOR: She looked, of course.
Maybe more intensely than before.

00:14:35.600 --> 00:14:38.280
So many half-moons in her work.

00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:42.040
They recurred for decades.

00:14:52.560 --> 00:14:55.920
She had her studios here, for decades.

00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:57.120
[Waves crashing]

00:15:12.160 --> 00:15:15.280
The studio windows
became a kind of cinema for her.

00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:24.240
[Waves crashing gently outside]

00:15:55.560 --> 00:15:56.600
[Window squeaks]

00:15:57.560 --> 00:15:59.480
NARRATOR: Even her own love life.

00:16:04.920 --> 00:16:06.520
Her earliest pictures of St Ives.

00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:10.800
She loved its height,

00:16:10.880 --> 00:16:12.720
vista, shapes...

00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:19.560
Blonde boxy beauty.

00:16:25.960 --> 00:16:27.720
The colourist in her.

00:16:41.520 --> 00:16:44.280
- St Ives needed to be drawn.
- [Seagulls call]

00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:52.800
Or liquefied, flattened.

00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:01.520
[Wind grows more intense]

00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:06.240
NARRATOR: How much do you flatten?

00:17:11.760 --> 00:17:17.080
How much did Willie project onto St Ives
things that weren't quite there?

00:17:21.960 --> 00:17:26.080
How much of what she saw did she reject?

00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:31.960
[Beach sounds fade out]

00:17:33.240 --> 00:17:35.680
NARRATOR: Was she
searching for something?

00:17:39.320 --> 00:17:41.720
There's nighttime here, isn't there?

00:17:41.800 --> 00:17:43.800
And frustration, maybe?

00:17:43.880 --> 00:17:47.760
A struggle against the way
the boats and buildings looked?

00:17:55.880 --> 00:17:57.440
[Waves crashing gently]

00:18:01.640 --> 00:18:05.080
NARRATOR: Willie got to know
other famous artists in St Ives.

00:18:05.160 --> 00:18:09.400
Naum Gabo,
Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson...

00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:13.840
WILLIE:
I often went out with him in his car.

00:18:15.080 --> 00:18:17.520
He drove his car like his pencil

00:18:17.600 --> 00:18:20.560
over his canvases
and people used to shake their fists.

00:18:23.960 --> 00:18:26.120
And we-- we'd either go for walks

00:18:26.200 --> 00:18:28.400
or sit on rocks, look at things or talk.

00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:31.920
And often drawing.
But not alongside each other.

00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:37.200
There was no question of each other
seeing each other's work until afterwards.

00:18:42.800 --> 00:18:46.040
- [Inquisitive music concludes]
- [Wind blows]

00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:51.400
NARRATOR: The coastline around St Ives

00:18:51.480 --> 00:18:53.520
looks like painted by a romantic.

00:18:54.600 --> 00:18:57.080
But Willie wasn't a romantic.

00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:02.440
Her eyes were caught by unromantic things.

00:19:03.080 --> 00:19:05.280
Her brain worked in other ways.

00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:12.320
We already know that she was synaesthesic,

00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:16.840
but look back at her youth and there are
more signs of how her brain worked.

00:19:18.520 --> 00:19:23.520
As a child in St Andrews, she met
the biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

00:19:25.080 --> 00:19:28.400
WILLIE: I remember him very well
in my childhood. And then, you see,

00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:32.400
studying Leonardo da Vinci
and his drawings of waves

00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:35.960
led me, strangely enough,
to getting hold of--

00:19:36.040 --> 00:19:38.320
out of the library in Cupar,

00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:41.080
D'Arcy Thompson's Growth and Form.

00:19:42.160 --> 00:19:46.000
Back to Leonardo da Vinci,
back to my own studies in St Ives.

00:19:46.080 --> 00:19:49.120
And really, that book,
The Growth and Form, had quite a...

00:19:49.760 --> 00:19:51.480
quite an impact.

00:19:51.560 --> 00:19:52.840
Over the years.

00:19:53.440 --> 00:19:55.440
NARRATOR: She was electrified.

00:19:55.920 --> 00:19:58.360
Nature has a structure and a grid.

00:19:59.480 --> 00:20:01.320
Something was dawning in Willie.

00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:05.400
D'Arcy Thompson's book
confirmed the dawning.

00:20:05.480 --> 00:20:07.120
[Pages rustle in the wind]

00:20:12.120 --> 00:20:15.960
And other kids
were electrified by similar things.

00:20:16.600 --> 00:20:19.480
When I heard of Willie's fascination
with D'Arcy Thompson,

00:20:19.560 --> 00:20:20.560
I was hooked.

00:20:21.520 --> 00:20:25.800
I was bad at words at school,
but loved grids and the pictures

00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:27.000
of MC Escher.

00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:31.000
A gap closes between her and me.

00:20:32.200 --> 00:20:35.560
And then this happens.
Under my Christmas tree, a card.

00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:39.040
My partner has bought me
a painting in an auction.

00:20:39.120 --> 00:20:42.120
- It's by Wilhelmina Barns Graham.
- [Inquisitive music]

00:20:43.840 --> 00:20:45.200
Or so it says.

00:20:45.280 --> 00:20:47.000
[Packaging rustles]

00:20:47.560 --> 00:20:49.000
It arrives.

00:20:51.680 --> 00:20:53.240
[Wrapping rustles]

00:20:54.640 --> 00:20:56.360
[Tape peels]

00:20:59.800 --> 00:21:00.960
Something's wrong.

00:21:01.040 --> 00:21:02.320
[Music intensifies]

00:21:07.280 --> 00:21:11.560
The signature is blocky, not swirly
like Willie's hand written signature.

00:21:15.560 --> 00:21:16.560
Panic.

00:21:17.160 --> 00:21:18.920
I take it out of its frame.

00:21:20.680 --> 00:21:23.520
None of the books
on her show this painting.

00:21:23.600 --> 00:21:25.480
It's not online anywhere.

00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:32.520
But it's so like
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson and Escher.

00:21:33.200 --> 00:21:35.240
Did Barns-Graham do it?

00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:39.560
I think I can see
a searching brain in it.

00:21:39.640 --> 00:21:44.200
The sort of brain
that sees socks and rocks in elephants.

00:21:44.280 --> 00:21:45.480
But I'm worried.

00:21:46.160 --> 00:21:47.280
[Keyboard clicks]

00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:52.520
I email Rob Airey at the Trust
that looks after Willie's work and legacy,

00:21:52.600 --> 00:21:54.160
and await his reply.

00:21:55.600 --> 00:21:56.880
[Waves crash gently]

00:21:56.960 --> 00:21:59.160
I went to St Ives with Rob.

00:22:02.120 --> 00:22:04.080
Back in Edinburgh, at the Trust,

00:22:04.160 --> 00:22:06.400
he had shown me her notebooks

00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:10.280
from years later.
Never published, never filmed.

00:22:10.360 --> 00:22:12.080
[Inquisitive music continues]

00:22:14.760 --> 00:22:17.400
The first pages here we know.

00:22:19.320 --> 00:22:22.160
Willie's letter-colour synaesthesia.

00:22:22.240 --> 00:22:24.240
But then this page.

00:22:24.320 --> 00:22:26.080
Coloured blocks on a grid.

00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:30.400
One to 24 horizontally,
one to 20 vertically.

00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:34.760
The blocks are leaning.

00:22:34.840 --> 00:22:38.880
Synaesthesia on the left
and numbers on the right.

00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:44.320
What's happening here?

00:22:45.360 --> 00:22:48.440
On the right, I think,
Willie's trying to have in the image

00:22:48.520 --> 00:22:51.480
the same amount of green as salmon pink.

00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:54.320
But the pink is in bigger squares,

00:22:54.400 --> 00:22:57.680
the green's in smaller,
and turned into diamonds.

00:22:59.400 --> 00:23:03.000
Same here. On the left
there's as much yellow as blue,

00:23:04.080 --> 00:23:07.400
but the blue is a block
and the yellow is buzzing like bees.

00:23:08.360 --> 00:23:09.360
[Pages rustle]

00:23:15.280 --> 00:23:20.680
On the left Willie writes,
"Green: 103 minus 3 equals 100."

00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:25.040
Red is 93.5 percent of the green.

00:23:25.800 --> 00:23:29.160
Almost equal, close enough to balance,

00:23:29.240 --> 00:23:31.880
but maybe enjoyably out of balance?

00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:40.120
And on the left here, is there
the same amount of white and orange?

00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:44.200
On the right, Willie is trying
to teach herself Italian.

00:23:51.440 --> 00:23:52.440
[Pages rustle]

00:24:11.760 --> 00:24:13.520
And here it's clear.

00:24:13.600 --> 00:24:19.320
On the left,
"Red: 40 plus 25 plus 36 equals 101."

00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:24.000
Close enough to a hundred.

00:24:24.920 --> 00:24:26.560
Green is a hundred.

00:24:27.240 --> 00:24:29.160
Orange is one hundred.

00:24:29.680 --> 00:24:30.720
[Pensive music]

00:24:30.800 --> 00:24:33.640
These two blocks of purple make a hundred.

00:24:49.760 --> 00:24:50.760
[Pages rustle]

00:24:55.280 --> 00:24:56.480
[Music continues]

00:25:11.520 --> 00:25:14.880
Willie's brain breaks down
the order of the page,

00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:17.320
then rebuilds it in a new way.

00:25:18.440 --> 00:25:21.160
She deeply respects what she found,

00:25:21.240 --> 00:25:24.040
but filters it through a machine.

00:25:27.400 --> 00:25:29.560
Rubik's cube meets Rothko.

00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:32.960
There are loads of these notebooks.

00:25:34.440 --> 00:25:35.960
[Pensive music continues]

00:25:41.160 --> 00:25:45.080 align:center line:8%
LYNNE: Maths gives you a certainty.
It gives you an armature.

00:25:45.160 --> 00:25:46.320 align:center line:8%
It gives you a pattern

00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:48.720 align:center line:8%
that you can then work against,

00:25:48.800 --> 00:25:50.840
or with, or within.

00:25:51.520 --> 00:25:53.320
Or you can break out of it.

00:25:55.760 --> 00:25:58.880
And so, many of her paintings,
if you look closely,

00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:04.120
you can actually still see that draw on
armature of design and-- and measurements.

00:26:11.560 --> 00:26:14.440
NARRATOR: Hundreds of pages
of art and numbers.

00:26:14.520 --> 00:26:16.120
She couldn't stop herself.

00:26:16.200 --> 00:26:17.680
What was she searching for?

00:26:17.760 --> 00:26:19.040
[Waves crashing]

00:26:19.120 --> 00:26:23.440
Obviously balance,
a kind of scaffold in her images.

00:26:24.440 --> 00:26:27.160
Add in the synaesthesia of Agnus Dei,

00:26:27.800 --> 00:26:29.720
and, can we say, harmony?

00:26:34.320 --> 00:26:37.840
Willie liked a good song,
but why all this mathematics?

00:26:39.320 --> 00:26:43.480
In St Ives in the 1940s,
Willie had the club of other artists

00:26:43.560 --> 00:26:45.080
and the light and landscape.

00:26:45.800 --> 00:26:47.640
But was there something missing?

00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:50.640
Where is all this leading?

00:26:51.520 --> 00:26:55.480
It's part of me this question
because maths are part of my life too.

00:26:56.840 --> 00:26:59.160
I've five tattooed on my hand.

00:26:59.240 --> 00:27:01.360
Five is a Fibonacci number.

00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:03.640
It occurs in nature so much.

00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:07.800
Leaf cycles,
the swirls inside a red cabbage...

00:27:09.120 --> 00:27:13.880
Willie loved the underside
of leaves and ferns. And the golden ratio.

00:27:14.800 --> 00:27:17.240
I think she would have been
a Fibonacci fan.

00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:24.640
Wind the clock back further,

00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:28.120
to Edinburgh College of Arts in the 1930s,
where she studied.

00:27:29.520 --> 00:27:32.600
Drawing was the font,
the root of the course.

00:27:34.280 --> 00:27:36.920
It's also about Willie's brain.

00:27:39.400 --> 00:27:42.120
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"Drawing is a discipline of the mind."

00:27:42.800 --> 00:27:45.120
"I seek to discover abstract shapes,

00:27:45.680 --> 00:27:50.440
accepting the subject's demands,
often touching different moods."

00:27:58.080 --> 00:28:02.040
NARRATOR: Leonardo Da Vinci
wrote something similar.... He said,

00:28:02.120 --> 00:28:04.840
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"Look at certain walls, stained with damp,

00:28:04.920 --> 00:28:07.120
or at stones of uneven colour."

00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:12.040
"You will be able to see in these
the likeness of divine landscapes,

00:28:12.120 --> 00:28:15.920
adorned with mountains,
ruins, rocks, woods..."

00:28:16.800 --> 00:28:19.080
"Expressions of faces and clothes,

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:21.960
and an infinity of things."

00:28:23.080 --> 00:28:24.640
[Music continues]

00:28:24.720 --> 00:28:28.280
NARRATOR: And Willie shared
something else visual, neurological

00:28:28.360 --> 00:28:29.760
with Leonardo da Vinci.

00:28:31.080 --> 00:28:32.800
She could write backwards

00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:34.000
with her left hand,

00:28:34.760 --> 00:28:36.920
though she usually wrote with her right.

00:28:37.800 --> 00:28:39.840
And she used mirrors as she painted.

00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:43.800
She'd look at pictures in them

00:28:43.880 --> 00:28:46.200
to make sure
that they worked well inverted.

00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:53.560
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"Painting is pattern...

00:28:53.640 --> 00:28:56.640
and paintings should be
just as good upside down,

00:28:56.720 --> 00:28:58.480
sideways, via a looking glass."

00:28:59.960 --> 00:29:02.480
"I use a looking glass
constantly in painting."

00:29:03.720 --> 00:29:07.560
"And often turn my compositions
upside down and on end when I'm working."

00:29:12.080 --> 00:29:14.120
NARRATOR: Are we closer to Willie now?

00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:16.760
To her brain? Her way of seeing?

00:29:18.240 --> 00:29:22.040
It's the late 1940s.
World War II has ended.

00:29:23.960 --> 00:29:28.160
She's in St Ives now
and happy as an artist.

00:29:29.120 --> 00:29:30.840
Or is she?

00:29:31.600 --> 00:29:34.840
Had she found her place? Her form?

00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:37.320
Or is she still searching for it?

00:29:39.200 --> 00:29:44.080
Inside Willie, inside her skull
laid an object, an organ.

00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:46.560
Like a fire in a box factory.

00:29:47.920 --> 00:29:52.440
That object – her brain – was about
to meet its match....

00:29:56.760 --> 00:30:01.320
Throughout her 20s and 30s,
Willie was searching for something.

00:30:01.840 --> 00:30:04.520
In May 1949, she found it.

00:30:05.920 --> 00:30:08.320
The encounter changed her life.

00:30:10.280 --> 00:30:13.800
In the Alps in Switzerland,
she climbed a glacier.

00:30:14.360 --> 00:30:18.960
The glacier was formed
about 25,000 years ago.

00:30:19.920 --> 00:30:23.400
Willie was formed 110 years ago.

00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:29.040
The glacier was in retreat that day,
Willie was in advance.

00:30:29.120 --> 00:30:30.280
[Single drum sounds]

00:30:32.440 --> 00:30:33.800
[Music concludes]

00:30:36.200 --> 00:30:37.880
[Birds chirp in the distance]

00:30:54.360 --> 00:30:56.120
[Wind blows outside car]

00:31:02.880 --> 00:31:04.400
[Cow bell rings]

00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:12.760
[Panting]

00:31:14.560 --> 00:31:16.040
[Hopeful music]

00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:34.120
[Majestic music]

00:31:58.520 --> 00:32:01.040
[Rhythmical echoey panting]

00:32:22.800 --> 00:32:24.320
[Panting grows louder]

00:32:39.360 --> 00:32:41.600
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"Enormous standing forms,

00:32:41.680 --> 00:32:44.040
polished like glass with sharp edge,

00:32:44.120 --> 00:32:48.920
which could include buried within it
and on it, huge and tiny stones."

00:32:57.040 --> 00:33:00.560
"The warmth of the sun
melting and changing the forms."

00:33:01.080 --> 00:33:06.080
"In a few days a thinness could
become a hole. It seemed to breathe!"

00:33:18.920 --> 00:33:23.400
"The fantastic shapes, the contrast
of solidity and transparency."

00:33:47.120 --> 00:33:48.800
[Snow crunches underfoot]

00:33:53.680 --> 00:33:55.800
[Heavy panting]

00:34:12.880 --> 00:34:15.680
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"Likeness to glass and transparency,

00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:18.480
combined with solid rough ridges

00:34:18.560 --> 00:34:22.680
made me wish
to combine in a work all angles."

00:34:24.040 --> 00:34:29.080
"At once, from above, through,
and all round, as a bird flies."

00:34:29.160 --> 00:34:30.880
"A total experience."

00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:46.960
[Majestic music continues]

00:35:59.520 --> 00:36:01.760
- [Avalanche thunders]
- [Music cuts]

00:36:05.880 --> 00:36:09.160
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"I heard the awful roar of an avalanche

00:36:09.240 --> 00:36:11.360
and what looked like a trickle of salt

00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:12.800
in the distant heights."

00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:24.960
"I experienced a terrifying desire

00:36:25.040 --> 00:36:27.320
to roll myself down the mountain side."

00:36:28.720 --> 00:36:29.720
[Wind blows]

00:36:32.600 --> 00:36:33.960
[Tense music]

00:37:16.720 --> 00:37:17.760
[Snow crunches]

00:37:45.240 --> 00:37:46.240
[Music concludes]

00:37:46.920 --> 00:37:47.920
[Wind blows]

00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:55.560
[Birds chirp faintly in the distance]

00:37:57.600 --> 00:37:59.480
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"All this and many moods,

00:37:59.560 --> 00:38:02.920
beautiful and frightening, fascinated me."

00:38:07.840 --> 00:38:09.600
"The rare experiences in life

00:38:09.680 --> 00:38:12.680
of a sudden glimpse
into much deeper things."

00:38:17.680 --> 00:38:18.920
[Single drum sounds]

00:38:23.520 --> 00:38:25.440
[Sombre violin music]

00:39:35.880 --> 00:39:37.240
[Panting]

00:41:57.720 --> 00:42:01.600
[Music swells]

00:42:40.640 --> 00:42:44.080
[Music continues to swell]

00:44:02.960 --> 00:44:04.200
[Music concludes]

00:44:04.280 --> 00:44:06.040
[Cow bells echo in the distance]

00:44:16.880 --> 00:44:20.320
NARRATOR: Willie climbed
the Grindelwald glacier with a family,

00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:21.720
The Brothertons.

00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:24.240
It was supposed just to be a holiday.

00:44:24.960 --> 00:44:28.520
She didn't see
life changes, art changes, coming.

00:44:30.200 --> 00:44:35.480
But her brain machine, fully fuelled,
was ready for ignition.

00:44:37.320 --> 00:44:38.320
What ignited it?

00:44:39.840 --> 00:44:40.920
Was it the light?

00:44:41.960 --> 00:44:45.640
She knew the coastal light
of St Andrews and St Ives,

00:44:45.720 --> 00:44:49.160
but this was... pearlised? Lunar?

00:44:49.840 --> 00:44:50.880
No pure whites?

00:44:50.960 --> 00:44:52.400
No jet blacks?

00:44:52.480 --> 00:44:54.840
[Wind blows and echoes through mountains

00:44:57.360 --> 00:45:00.080
There were unexpected contrasts in light.

00:45:00.160 --> 00:45:01.360
[Distorted sounds]

00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:07.840
She climbed in daylight,
but some of her glacier pictures

00:45:07.920 --> 00:45:09.560
are like nightscapes.

00:45:10.480 --> 00:45:15.120
The top is a kind of sky,
perhaps overpainted to darken it.

00:45:17.400 --> 00:45:19.080
David Lynch would love this.

00:45:20.480 --> 00:45:22.000
And what about the sound?

00:45:24.120 --> 00:45:26.440
- [Water drops]
- [Snow crunches underfoot]

00:45:27.040 --> 00:45:29.120
The crunch of boots on ice?

00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:33.080
Glaciers creak and crack and ping?

00:45:33.960 --> 00:45:35.480
The tension of a drum?

00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:38.520
Do the pictures evoke sound?

00:45:39.520 --> 00:45:41.880
Scraping? Solitude?

00:45:42.840 --> 00:45:44.640
She described herself as a lone wolf.

00:45:47.560 --> 00:45:49.360
And what about colour?

00:45:50.280 --> 00:45:54.920
This is probably one of the few pictures
she made when she was in Switzerland.

00:45:55.960 --> 00:45:59.360
How muted the colour. The restriction.

00:46:01.240 --> 00:46:02.280
And this.

00:46:03.240 --> 00:46:05.320
Forty shades of green blue.

00:46:06.880 --> 00:46:11.080
The blue is in the ground, in the ice,
more than in the sky.

00:46:15.120 --> 00:46:18.840
If the top here
is a kind of sky, it's brown.

00:46:20.440 --> 00:46:23.880
As you sink downwards,
you get bluer, lighter.

00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:27.080
Is there a dive in this picture?

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:32.720
You feel your body
when you climb a glacier.

00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:35.200
Did the muscles in Willie's legs burn?

00:46:36.360 --> 00:46:38.200
She had lung problems all her life.

00:46:38.760 --> 00:46:40.600
So she must have wheezed.

00:46:40.680 --> 00:46:42.400
Struggled to breathe.

00:46:46.360 --> 00:46:49.360
- Did she become hyper-oxygenated?
- [Muffled buzzing]

00:46:49.440 --> 00:46:50.440
High?

00:46:55.880 --> 00:46:57.280
And what about gender?

00:46:57.960 --> 00:47:01.600
Women climbed the Alps,
but it was more of a male playground.

00:47:03.280 --> 00:47:06.040
Did she enjoy defying the stereotype?

00:47:07.640 --> 00:47:08.880
She didn't climb high,

00:47:08.960 --> 00:47:12.440
but it wasn't what her father
would have expected of her, was it?

00:47:12.520 --> 00:47:14.880
[Gentle reflective music]

00:47:14.960 --> 00:47:17.600
And there was a kind of art defiance.

00:47:18.520 --> 00:47:21.640
Almost every painter
in the Alps looked up.

00:47:21.720 --> 00:47:23.560
Blue sky, brown earth.

00:47:24.520 --> 00:47:27.040
They gave us gouged grandeur.

00:47:27.120 --> 00:47:32.000
Sublime staircases to travel into,
to leave the everyday world.

00:47:33.200 --> 00:47:35.240
Willie looked down.

00:47:36.240 --> 00:47:41.160
Unexcited by compositions of old,
of the standard romance.

00:47:42.360 --> 00:47:46.800
She saw below her, in the ice. But what?

00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:52.160
Something like the Perspex sculptures
of her friend Naum Gabo?

00:48:01.520 --> 00:48:03.320
A maquette of nature?

00:48:04.080 --> 00:48:05.080
A lattice?

00:48:11.360 --> 00:48:13.760
And, can we say mathematics?

00:48:19.760 --> 00:48:21.960
A parabola at the bottom left.

00:48:22.920 --> 00:48:25.480
A big left-leaning square in the middle.

00:48:26.560 --> 00:48:29.040
Except that it's not just a square.

00:48:30.720 --> 00:48:32.000
We can see through it.

00:48:32.080 --> 00:48:33.080
Past it.

00:48:33.160 --> 00:48:37.280
To the greens and whites.
The striations and scaffolds. Behind it.

00:48:39.280 --> 00:48:40.840
A kind of X-ray.

00:48:46.640 --> 00:48:49.920
The painting on the left
seems like a stage backdrop,

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:52.880
something Nijinsky could have
danced in front of.

00:48:52.960 --> 00:48:54.880
Dramatic, surreal.

00:48:55.960 --> 00:48:58.880
The picture on the right
is like a mathematician

00:48:58.960 --> 00:49:00.640
seeing the one on the left.

00:49:03.720 --> 00:49:09.480
The great curving wave or cliff face
has ovoids and ellipsis in it.

00:49:10.440 --> 00:49:14.200
Left is granite, right is glass. Ice.

00:49:18.080 --> 00:49:20.120
David Bowie owned this one.

00:49:21.720 --> 00:49:24.800
Another transparent Willie's cat cradle.

00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:32.240
Critics sometimes said that Willie
got these forms from Barbara Hepworth,

00:49:32.960 --> 00:49:37.520
but Willie's glacier absorption
– can we say infection? –

00:49:38.080 --> 00:49:41.160
is more primal
than just the influence of art

00:49:41.240 --> 00:49:43.280
[Water drops]

00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:47.360
This, for example,
is as visually complex as four paintings.

00:49:48.840 --> 00:49:51.880
It seems to have
pyramids in it and daylight.

00:49:53.120 --> 00:49:57.520
And night and surface
and design and confidence.

00:49:59.920 --> 00:50:03.040
Disinhibition and engineering.

00:50:04.120 --> 00:50:05.240
[Muffled clicking]

00:50:06.040 --> 00:50:09.680
A portrait of an infected brain.

00:50:11.880 --> 00:50:14.000
You can see yourself in things, can't you?

00:50:15.240 --> 00:50:17.480
Epiphany is a strike of empathy.

00:50:19.360 --> 00:50:23.960
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote,
"The Poet turns the world to glass."

00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:28.040
He meant that she makes it see-through.

00:50:28.120 --> 00:50:29.840
[Wind blows gently]

00:50:34.480 --> 00:50:38.160
Willie went into the glacier
like you go into a landscape.

00:50:39.080 --> 00:50:40.200
[Single drum sounds]

00:50:44.920 --> 00:50:46.680
[Rain falls]

00:50:50.440 --> 00:50:53.800
It's nearly seven decades
since Willie's climb.

00:50:54.520 --> 00:50:57.960
Grindelwald still does its sleepy sublime.

00:51:05.640 --> 00:51:07.080
[Gentle traffic buzz]

00:51:09.160 --> 00:51:13.520
Back in Edinburgh, I take my picture
to Rob at the Barns-Graham Trust.

00:51:15.440 --> 00:51:19.680
He shows me St Ives paintings
with the same blocky Willie signature.

00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:22.800
I'm a bit more pleased.

00:51:23.640 --> 00:51:25.520
Maybe she's in my life more?

00:51:29.200 --> 00:51:34.440
NARRATOR: What happened to Willie
and her art in the decades since May 1949?

00:51:34.960 --> 00:51:36.160
[Birds chirp]

00:51:36.240 --> 00:51:39.680
- DAVID: We met on November 11th.
- WILLIE: This man came up to me...

00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:42.560
You came up to me and you said,

00:51:42.640 --> 00:51:46.200
"Nobody told me Willie Barnes-Graham
was back in St Ives."

00:51:46.280 --> 00:51:48.240
And I thought, "Mm, what cheek!"

00:51:49.440 --> 00:51:52.880
And we were met shortly afterwards
and off we went

00:51:52.960 --> 00:51:55.400
and we walked right over the hills.

00:51:57.080 --> 00:52:00.280
DAVID: When you came back
from Grindelwald... erm...

00:52:00.880 --> 00:52:02.600
WILLIE: You were on the station.

00:52:04.040 --> 00:52:06.800
- DAVID: I was waiting for you.
- WILLIE: And we got married

00:52:06.880 --> 00:52:09.120
- that October in Scotland.
- [Bells toll]

00:52:09.200 --> 00:52:11.280
DAVID: I waited for you,
and by this time

00:52:11.360 --> 00:52:14.040
you'd realised that what a gem I was

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:18.880
- and you couldn't pass me up any more.
- WILLIE [laughs]: Diamond.

00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:20.560
[David laughs]

00:52:21.640 --> 00:52:23.800
[Bell tolling and bird chirps continue]

00:52:23.880 --> 00:52:25.920
LYNNE: Then, the marriage...

00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:29.400
He was a lot younger than her.
It didn't really last.

00:52:29.480 --> 00:52:31.400
And I think then she was on her own.

00:52:32.720 --> 00:52:35.480
She was on her own until the 1970s.

00:52:36.240 --> 00:52:38.080
[Atmospheric guitar music]

00:52:40.680 --> 00:52:44.920
NARRATOR: St Ives and Cornwall
weren't quite the same after the glaciers.

00:52:46.040 --> 00:52:48.200
Porthleven, across the peninsula.

00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:55.000
Her drawing of it doesn't look
too influenced by her Alpine epiphany.

00:52:57.480 --> 00:52:58.960
But then her painting...

00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:02.280
Epic and blocky.

00:53:03.640 --> 00:53:05.880
- Boxes.
- [Bird calls]

00:53:05.960 --> 00:53:08.240
Like it's made of wooden toys.

00:53:16.280 --> 00:53:20.560
Willie packed a lifetime
of picture-making into the 1950s alone.

00:53:21.400 --> 00:53:24.800
She won prizes
and was shown in many exhibitions.

00:53:24.880 --> 00:53:29.760
Some of her glacier pictures were bought
by public and private collectors.

00:53:30.720 --> 00:53:31.720
[Tense music]

00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:35.960
Cornwall became glaciated.

00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:43.160
Composition Sea, 1954.

00:53:48.040 --> 00:53:52.840
Snow at Wharfedale, 1957,
when she was teaching in Leeds

00:53:57.360 --> 00:53:59.120
Is she angry here?

00:54:04.320 --> 00:54:08.520
Are her eyes flicking between things,
as they do when you're on a train?

00:54:09.560 --> 00:54:11.080
[Train hums in distance]

00:54:12.680 --> 00:54:13.840
[Bell tolls]

00:54:16.000 --> 00:54:19.560
The wildness
of Willie's work in the 1950s.

00:54:19.640 --> 00:54:21.840
Her brain had changed.

00:54:21.920 --> 00:54:23.440
[Wind chimes ring gently]

00:54:27.440 --> 00:54:30.640
She was so many things in the '50s.

00:54:30.720 --> 00:54:35.800
Wildly productive. Unwell.
Depressed. Exhausted.

00:54:35.880 --> 00:54:38.120
Unstoppable. A traveller.

00:54:39.840 --> 00:54:42.960
In Paris she met the sculptor Giacometti,

00:54:43.040 --> 00:54:47.920
artist Constantin Brâncuși,
and saw the paintings of Sophie Arp.

00:54:49.920 --> 00:54:53.040
Arp's 1934 picture of movement circles.

00:54:53.960 --> 00:54:57.240
Might we see echoes of this
later in Willie's work?

00:54:59.600 --> 00:55:01.760
And then, there was a guy and a dog.

00:55:03.280 --> 00:55:06.440
Willie's friend Geoff
lived in Quintrell Downs,

00:55:06.520 --> 00:55:08.280
an hour's drive from St Ives.

00:55:09.800 --> 00:55:11.480
He had a big mongrel dog

00:55:11.560 --> 00:55:12.880
called Scruffy.

00:55:12.960 --> 00:55:16.840
Scruffy had big ears
and, when he sat on Geoff's lap,

00:55:17.520 --> 00:55:20.680
Willie could see Geoff through those ears.

00:55:21.960 --> 00:55:26.360
In 1952,
Willie painted this picture Red Table.

00:55:28.120 --> 00:55:30.760
Soon the pentagon shape of the table

00:55:31.440 --> 00:55:35.520
has jumped the fence – here on the right –
into a series of paintings called...

00:55:36.280 --> 00:55:37.960
Geoff and Scruffy.

00:55:38.040 --> 00:55:39.240
[Chimes continues]

00:55:39.320 --> 00:55:43.400
A guy and his dog,
but really a shape and another shape.

00:55:44.480 --> 00:55:46.280
The pentagon, always,

00:55:46.920 --> 00:55:48.840
and a half-moon, always,

00:55:49.480 --> 00:55:51.520
like the half-moon beaches in St Ives.

00:55:53.240 --> 00:55:57.760
Also two lines between the two shapes,
like the table legs.

00:56:00.680 --> 00:56:01.760
[Frost crunching]

00:56:02.480 --> 00:56:04.120
Willie was riffing here.

00:56:04.680 --> 00:56:07.800
A pentagon, a table, a friend

00:56:07.880 --> 00:56:10.360
- are all a block.
- [Lines swish]

00:56:10.440 --> 00:56:13.080
And a dog is like the curve of a beach.

00:56:13.600 --> 00:56:15.040
Back to the free thinking

00:56:15.120 --> 00:56:16.960
of elephant-socks-rocks.

00:56:21.960 --> 00:56:22.960
[Wind blows]

00:56:23.560 --> 00:56:25.720
WILLIE: And we went to Rome,

00:56:26.480 --> 00:56:27.480
Tuscany...

00:56:28.600 --> 00:56:30.400
South Sicily.

00:56:30.880 --> 00:56:33.040
- [Chimes continue]
- [Train hums]

00:56:33.120 --> 00:56:34.280
That's right.

00:56:41.640 --> 00:56:43.240
[Hopeful music]

00:56:43.320 --> 00:56:46.520
NARRATOR: Assisi, Rome,
Palermo, Syracuse,

00:56:46.600 --> 00:56:49.080
Porticello, Chiusure, Taormina,

00:56:49.160 --> 00:56:54.800
Santa Elia, Palinuro,
Burano, Monte Olivetti,

00:56:54.880 --> 00:56:57.640
Firenze, Fiesole, Venice,

00:56:57.720 --> 00:57:00.520
- Milan, San Gimignano...
- [Birds chirp]

00:57:02.120 --> 00:57:03.600
- Did she look...
- [Bell tolls]

00:57:03.680 --> 00:57:05.920
at the same things that tourists saw?

00:57:08.240 --> 00:57:10.680
Or did other things catch her eye?

00:57:13.320 --> 00:57:16.120
Did she look up at the world of Virgil?

00:57:16.800 --> 00:57:18.560
And Renaissance cities?

00:57:20.480 --> 00:57:21.600
Or downwards?

00:57:24.760 --> 00:57:26.760
- [Music continues]
- [Water running]

00:57:46.200 --> 00:57:48.880
Her best Italian drawings and paintings

00:57:48.960 --> 00:57:51.440
extend her visual thinking
and structure.

00:57:51.520 --> 00:57:52.880
[Train hums gently]

00:57:56.040 --> 00:57:57.760
Before she went, she wrote...

00:57:58.280 --> 00:58:00.440
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"For years, my ambition has been

00:58:00.520 --> 00:58:02.840
to study the landscape in Italy."

00:58:02.920 --> 00:58:06.000
"The landscapes that lie
behind the portraits in Bellini,

00:58:06.080 --> 00:58:08.200
Piero della Francesca, Mantegna..."

00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:11.960
"Evocations of landscape, rock and sea

00:58:12.440 --> 00:58:15.240
in terms of semi-transparent plains."

00:58:33.560 --> 00:58:37.320
NARRATOR: In Chiusure,
she found clay landscapes

00:58:37.400 --> 00:58:38.800
sculpted by rain,

00:58:39.280 --> 00:58:41.200
which reminded her of the glaciers.

00:58:46.960 --> 00:58:49.560
And then there are
new uses of colour in Italy.

00:58:52.200 --> 00:58:53.680
Underwashes.

00:58:58.160 --> 00:58:59.840
Amber glaciers.

00:59:02.320 --> 00:59:06.120
Switzerland transformed
in Mediterranean light.

00:59:09.280 --> 00:59:11.840
["Hard Day's Night"
by the Beatles playing]

00:59:11.920 --> 00:59:14.840
♪ It's been a hard day's night... ♪

00:59:15.800 --> 00:59:18.680
NARRATOR: Young working-class men.
Pop music.

00:59:18.760 --> 00:59:19.840
Swinging London.

00:59:20.560 --> 00:59:21.560
A new decade.

00:59:21.920 --> 00:59:23.360
New sexualities.

00:59:24.440 --> 00:59:25.440
[Song cuts out]

00:59:27.040 --> 00:59:31.360
NARRATOR: In her 50s now, in the era
of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones,

00:59:31.440 --> 00:59:33.320
Willie probably looked uncool.

00:59:34.560 --> 00:59:36.400
She exhibited internationally.

00:59:37.280 --> 00:59:39.200
She didn't try to be fashionable.

00:59:40.280 --> 00:59:43.280
She said
she was looking for different answers.

00:59:44.560 --> 00:59:45.640
She lived in London.

00:59:46.360 --> 00:59:48.760
This is Brown Painting (Thames).

00:59:51.000 --> 00:59:52.440
[Inquisitive music]

00:59:52.920 --> 00:59:56.240
Meditation Series (Assemblage), 1966.

00:59:59.280 --> 01:00:00.280
Swarm.

01:00:03.400 --> 01:00:04.680
What's happening here?

01:00:05.560 --> 01:00:06.880
The feeling of the crowd?

01:00:07.480 --> 01:00:08.920
Of being overwhelmed?

01:00:18.280 --> 01:00:19.520
And this again.

01:00:26.120 --> 01:00:29.680
Willie started to go
on religious pilgrimages in the '60s.

01:00:30.720 --> 01:00:35.480
Her fellow pilgrims looked nothing like
The Beatles in their Ashrams in India.

01:00:37.880 --> 01:00:40.840
- But Willie's paintings were like...
- [Squares thump]

01:00:40.920 --> 01:00:43.160
...later Beatles' songs.

01:00:45.160 --> 01:00:46.320
Processions.

01:00:46.920 --> 01:00:50.360
On the road with other people,
bumping into them.

01:00:50.440 --> 01:00:51.720
[Thumping continues]

01:00:51.800 --> 01:00:54.560
Willie was reading
Carl Gustav Jung in these days,

01:00:54.640 --> 01:00:57.160
and became interested
in the Bahá'í religion.

01:00:58.560 --> 01:01:01.000
This picture, Assembly of Nine,

01:01:01.640 --> 01:01:03.480
each layer has nine squares,

01:01:04.000 --> 01:01:09.000
might be inspired by the Bahá'í belief
that nine is a sacred number.

01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:12.360
That people are unified in that number.

01:01:13.480 --> 01:01:15.600
And yet the squares edge into each other.

01:01:16.920 --> 01:01:18.320
There's tension here.

01:01:23.120 --> 01:01:24.320
[Music continues]

01:01:32.560 --> 01:01:36.760
The late '60s and into the '70s.
The women's movement.

01:01:38.240 --> 01:01:39.440
JENNI: I wonder if...

01:01:40.480 --> 01:01:45.640 align:center line:8%
male painters and female painters approach
things differently? Have you found that?

01:01:45.720 --> 01:01:48.040
- Could you tell from the art--
- WILLIE: Not so much today.

01:01:48.120 --> 01:01:50.920
[clears throat].
Because my nickname is Willie,

01:01:51.000 --> 01:01:53.840
- [Jenni laughs]
- I discovered that my work

01:01:53.920 --> 01:01:57.480
is always thought
to be a man until they... find out.

01:01:58.000 --> 01:02:00.880
And I try to keep it
in the background very often

01:02:00.960 --> 01:02:03.880
because of this reason,
cause in the past, I--

01:02:03.960 --> 01:02:05.800
One collector, uh...

01:02:05.880 --> 01:02:08.160
- [Wind chimes ring]
- when he discovered I was a woman,

01:02:08.240 --> 01:02:11.000
- he wanted me to alter a shape.
- [Jenni snorts]

01:02:11.080 --> 01:02:13.760
WILLIE: And-- and
I could have lost the sale.

01:02:17.160 --> 01:02:21.520
I think that women are inclined
to pay attention to detail.

01:02:21.600 --> 01:02:23.880
Whereas men are more inclined...

01:02:24.320 --> 01:02:26.640
to go for the main shapes.

01:02:27.320 --> 01:02:28.560
And the idea.

01:02:29.000 --> 01:02:31.560
And to stick to that--
now, this is all changing.

01:02:34.720 --> 01:02:40.080
LYNNE: Willie was... She certainly felt
and she was, in practical terms, ignored,

01:02:40.760 --> 01:02:44.120
particularly
from the sort of '60s, '70s onward.

01:02:50.760 --> 01:02:54.200
There was also
a very strong male-female thing that...

01:02:54.760 --> 01:02:57.120
collectors didn't want, uh, women artists,

01:02:57.200 --> 01:03:00.640
because they thought
that they would have shorter careers.

01:03:00.720 --> 01:03:02.760
Because they'd get married
and have children.

01:03:02.840 --> 01:03:06.840
And also that in-- within St Ives's where
she'd then been living for some time,

01:03:06.920 --> 01:03:07.960
men artists were

01:03:08.040 --> 01:03:11.920
quite competitive with each other,
but particularly with women artists.

01:03:12.360 --> 01:03:13.920
So she'd been a bit neglected.

01:03:19.120 --> 01:03:21.520
MARK: Was she good at self-publicity?

01:03:21.600 --> 01:03:24.080
Did she understand... that the...

01:03:24.560 --> 01:03:27.440
art world needed stories
about people that needed

01:03:27.520 --> 01:03:28.800
seduced, as it were?

01:03:30.520 --> 01:03:33.160
LYNNE: I think in that sense
she was an innocent.

01:03:33.800 --> 01:03:35.680
She was a bit combative.

01:03:35.760 --> 01:03:37.840
She didn't know how to work the system.

01:03:39.240 --> 01:03:41.600
If she didn't like something,
she would say it.

01:03:41.680 --> 01:03:43.360
And she would argue with people.

01:03:43.440 --> 01:03:46.160
And that was not very helpful
when you're meant to be

01:03:46.240 --> 01:03:49.280
making people comfortable
and-- and flattering them.

01:03:52.520 --> 01:03:53.880
[Chimes continue]

01:03:57.880 --> 01:04:01.160
NARRATOR: The Royal Academy
in London's blockbuster show,

01:04:01.480 --> 01:04:05.840
British Painting 1952-1977

01:04:06.560 --> 01:04:09.600
didn't include
a single picture by Willie...

01:04:14.200 --> 01:04:16.640
This is like Willie's Agnus Dei notebook,

01:04:17.360 --> 01:04:18.720
but grander,

01:04:18.800 --> 01:04:21.240
- more clearly musical.
- [Squares thump]

01:04:26.000 --> 01:04:28.960
In the '70s,
a woman who liked to live for the day,

01:04:29.440 --> 01:04:30.800
looked backwards

01:04:30.880 --> 01:04:32.240
to the glaciers.

01:04:38.080 --> 01:04:39.080
[Plane hums]

01:04:39.800 --> 01:04:42.160
WILLIE:
Then I went to Orkney...

01:04:45.960 --> 01:04:48.520
where I had an exhibition
for Pier Arts Centre.

01:04:50.600 --> 01:04:51.640
[Gentle breeze]

01:05:05.840 --> 01:05:08.120
NARRATOR: When most people
come to Orkney,

01:05:08.200 --> 01:05:10.880
they look out and up... to this.

01:05:11.280 --> 01:05:12.960
The dramatic island of Hoy.

01:05:14.080 --> 01:05:15.760
But just like in the Alps,

01:05:15.840 --> 01:05:19.000
Willie's eyes weren't caught by the vista.

01:05:19.680 --> 01:05:22.880
She looked downwards.
To what was at her feet.

01:05:22.960 --> 01:05:25.160
[Waves crashing gently in the distance]

01:05:30.160 --> 01:05:32.600
WILLIE: I was prowling,
of course, on the beach

01:05:32.680 --> 01:05:35.240
and blow me! I was walking on slabs.

01:05:35.320 --> 01:05:38.520
Those of you have been to Orkney
will know exactly what I mean.

01:05:43.760 --> 01:05:44.960
[Music continues]

01:05:46.640 --> 01:05:49.200
NARRATOR:
The rectangle slabs of Warebeth.

01:06:07.520 --> 01:06:09.160
[Wind blows outside car]

01:06:09.240 --> 01:06:11.400
Then head north to mainland Orkney.

01:06:11.480 --> 01:06:12.480
To Birsay.

01:06:14.520 --> 01:06:15.640
[Waves crashing]

01:06:16.920 --> 01:06:18.440
And if the sun shines...

01:06:38.160 --> 01:06:40.120
[Music and sounds of water continue]

01:06:49.200 --> 01:06:50.600
[Sounds of water fade out]

01:06:57.200 --> 01:06:59.120
Orkney in the '80s for Willie

01:06:59.200 --> 01:07:03.760
was almost as visually intense
as Switzerland in the '40s.

01:07:03.840 --> 01:07:05.400
[Waves crashing loudly]

01:07:19.640 --> 01:07:21.320
[Wind blows outside car]

01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:35.920
LYNNE: We were walking down
the rather rough track

01:07:36.000 --> 01:07:38.880
from her house Balmungo in St Andrews.

01:07:39.480 --> 01:07:41.480
And we stopped and there were puddles.

01:07:43.320 --> 01:07:45.640
- And she thumped her... erm...
- [Ice breaks]

01:07:46.240 --> 01:07:47.840
stick on it and it split.

01:07:47.920 --> 01:07:52.120
And it became like a glacier,
the ice shattered.

01:07:55.000 --> 01:08:00.000
In the '70s, '80s, she started to--
to paint and draw ice again.

01:08:00.080 --> 01:08:01.640
Because it reminded her.

01:08:01.720 --> 01:08:04.080
But it was her imagination

01:08:04.920 --> 01:08:07.240
that made that link back to glaciers.

01:08:08.960 --> 01:08:12.400
And I then met her assistant

01:08:12.480 --> 01:08:15.000
and companion, Rowan James.

01:08:15.080 --> 01:08:18.360
And we all liked each other,
so we kept in touch.

01:08:19.080 --> 01:08:23.200
And when they muted the idea
of a book, we spent more time together.

01:08:23.280 --> 01:08:24.480
[Music continues]

01:08:25.920 --> 01:08:28.680
They, together, formed a much stronger...

01:08:29.720 --> 01:08:32.840
bulwark, I suppose,
against all this prejudice

01:08:32.920 --> 01:08:35.320
and, uh, lack of support for her work.

01:08:36.080 --> 01:08:38.840
And Rowan was
a very good promoter of her work

01:08:38.920 --> 01:08:41.800
and took over
all of that connection with galleries.

01:08:43.120 --> 01:08:44.720
And when we met...

01:08:45.440 --> 01:08:50.080
they were determined that her position
as a key figure in St Ives

01:08:50.160 --> 01:08:51.440
should be recognized.

01:08:52.040 --> 01:08:55.280
And we had conversations about the book.

01:08:55.880 --> 01:08:57.720
And the book changed everything.

01:08:57.800 --> 01:08:59.920
- [Pages rustle]
- And without Rowan

01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:03.800
actually pushing it,
without Willie's determination

01:09:04.240 --> 01:09:07.280
and without me and my insight into her--

01:09:07.360 --> 01:09:10.360
We had a very close relationship,
which wasn't always easy--

01:09:10.440 --> 01:09:12.840
I don't think any of this
would have happened.

01:09:14.480 --> 01:09:16.360
When we started the book,

01:09:16.440 --> 01:09:20.440
they had no interest in her. They had
some work by her, but she was seen

01:09:20.520 --> 01:09:21.640
as an also-ran.

01:09:22.520 --> 01:09:24.840
And, uh... other critics said that to me.

01:09:24.920 --> 01:09:27.760
That why was I writing a book?
There was nothing to say.

01:09:28.560 --> 01:09:31.080
And also that she was,
literally, an also-ran.

01:09:31.160 --> 01:09:34.480
She wasn't really important.
Her contribution was secondary.

01:09:35.120 --> 01:09:40.560
The book about Willie...
allowed me to work in a much wider way.

01:09:42.120 --> 01:09:44.320
I spent three and a half years
on that book.

01:09:44.880 --> 01:09:48.760
Willie was a--
could be very sweet and kind.

01:09:48.840 --> 01:09:52.160
And when my husband was dying of cancer,

01:09:52.240 --> 01:09:54.760
she used to phone him.
I didn't know she did this.

01:09:55.320 --> 01:09:58.280
She used to phone him
and just have a chat to see how he was.

01:09:59.040 --> 01:10:01.280
I thought that was
a wonderful thing to do.

01:10:02.080 --> 01:10:04.920
So it-- it completely
transformed my life. And my...

01:10:05.800 --> 01:10:06.800
Uh...

01:10:07.360 --> 01:10:10.360
What's the word?
Ambition for what I could do in the world.

01:10:12.200 --> 01:10:13.680
[Gentle music]

01:10:27.320 --> 01:10:29.120
[Pencil scribbles on page]

01:10:57.800 --> 01:10:58.920
[Paint swooshes]

01:11:45.920 --> 01:11:50.360
NARRATOR: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham worked
continually until the end of her life.

01:11:51.960 --> 01:11:57.600
She died on 26 January 2004,
in St Andrews where she was born.

01:11:58.640 --> 01:12:00.040
- She was 91.
- [Music ends]

01:12:02.040 --> 01:12:05.400
In her last years,
as her mobility reduced,

01:12:05.480 --> 01:12:08.400
she produced
some of her most kinetic work.

01:12:08.920 --> 01:12:10.080
[Waves crash gently]

01:12:10.160 --> 01:12:13.800
In the Scorpio Series
of the mid- and late '90s,

01:12:13.880 --> 01:12:16.560
it seemed like she was
conducting an orchestra.

01:12:17.120 --> 01:12:19.120
An orchestra allegro.

01:12:19.720 --> 01:12:21.400
Her synaesthesia again.

01:12:22.280 --> 01:12:26.000
Fencing brush strokes,
girders of opaque colour.

01:12:26.840 --> 01:12:29.800
Several of these sheets
would be laid out in her studio.

01:12:30.800 --> 01:12:34.600
With a loaded brush, she'd make
paint marks from one to the next.

01:12:38.520 --> 01:12:41.920
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"Recent phase. A celebration of life."

01:12:42.800 --> 01:12:46.440
"An immediate expression
of energy, vitality,

01:12:46.520 --> 01:12:47.520
joy."

01:12:48.400 --> 01:12:49.480
"Colour as colour."

01:12:50.240 --> 01:12:51.440
"Texture as texture."

01:12:52.720 --> 01:12:54.320
"Blue is not sky."

01:12:55.160 --> 01:12:56.640
"Green is not grass."

01:12:57.760 --> 01:13:02.240
"Frequently using primary colours,
each can suggest a shape

01:13:02.680 --> 01:13:03.840
inside oneself."

01:13:05.080 --> 01:13:08.560
"Brushstrokes can be slim, fat, textured,

01:13:09.000 --> 01:13:11.600
light, aggressive, risky,

01:13:12.080 --> 01:13:14.360
delicate or unexpected."

01:13:17.920 --> 01:13:20.520
NARRATOR: Of this one,
Surprise no. 1, she said,

01:13:21.080 --> 01:13:25.360
TILDA SWINTON [VO]: "There were three
blues, three reds, and it looked nice."

01:13:25.960 --> 01:13:27.600
"Then came a dark note."

01:13:28.560 --> 01:13:31.240
"But it said,
'come on, take a bigger risk'."

01:13:32.520 --> 01:13:36.320
"So I took a brush
and drew the elongated circle."

01:13:39.040 --> 01:13:42.680
NARRATOR: Then she collaborated
with the innovative Graal Press,

01:13:42.760 --> 01:13:45.960
so that some of these paintings
became layered prints.

01:13:46.040 --> 01:13:47.480
[Wave crashing continues]

01:13:56.720 --> 01:13:58.360
[Delicate orchestral music]

01:14:10.280 --> 01:14:12.560
NARRATOR: Her life, her past recedes.

01:14:14.080 --> 01:14:15.960
We start to see her from a distance.

01:14:16.520 --> 01:14:18.720
- [Brush swooshes]
- I have an idea.

01:14:19.200 --> 01:14:21.480
I imagine a dark art gallery.

01:14:22.440 --> 01:14:25.200
What if we install
big screens in the gallery

01:14:25.280 --> 01:14:28.640
and project onto them
Willie's glacier pictures?

01:14:29.160 --> 01:14:30.360
In close up?

01:14:30.440 --> 01:14:31.520
To get close to her?

01:14:33.320 --> 01:14:37.880
We travel the UK, photographing
the paintings at very high resolution.

01:14:37.960 --> 01:14:39.160
[Music continues]

01:14:39.800 --> 01:14:43.000
It feels that we're getting close
to the contours of Willie.

01:14:44.600 --> 01:14:46.240
Yeah, so this is Pyknosis.

01:14:46.960 --> 01:14:49.320
It's two, three years after she'd been.

01:14:49.400 --> 01:14:51.880
- After the actual experience.
- [Mark]: Mhm.

01:14:51.960 --> 01:14:55.760
It was more about the painting act,
and... thinking about, obviously,

01:14:55.840 --> 01:14:57.160
the process of making...

01:14:57.800 --> 01:15:00.400
piece of work as an artist
rather than reacting--

01:15:00.480 --> 01:15:03.640
immediate reaction to the experience
of going, I suppose.

01:15:08.960 --> 01:15:10.240
[Wind blows gently]

01:15:11.320 --> 01:15:14.520
NARRATOR: Trying to see her brain.
Her infection.

01:15:17.840 --> 01:15:18.920
[Plastic squeaks]

01:15:21.320 --> 01:15:22.960
[Indistinct conversation]

01:15:27.360 --> 01:15:28.360
[Wind blows]

01:15:32.560 --> 01:15:36.240
And then we do go into
an art gallery and put up big screens.

01:15:42.640 --> 01:15:43.800
And people come.

01:15:49.080 --> 01:15:52.040
In the show I imagine what older Willie

01:15:52.120 --> 01:15:54.360
might say to her younger self

01:15:54.960 --> 01:15:56.880
on the day of the climb.

01:15:59.160 --> 01:16:01.280
- [Music fades out]
- [Distorted beep]

01:16:04.120 --> 01:16:05.480
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
What happened?

01:16:08.520 --> 01:16:09.520
[Deep exhale]

01:16:12.520 --> 01:16:14.040
You know what happened.

01:16:19.600 --> 01:16:20.600
[Deep exhale]

01:16:21.640 --> 01:16:23.040
You were there.

01:16:27.000 --> 01:16:29.080
[Inhales and exhales heavily]

01:16:29.480 --> 01:16:30.720
It's so long ago.

01:16:32.680 --> 01:16:33.800
Isn't it?

01:16:35.800 --> 01:16:38.080
[Inquisitive music]

01:16:38.880 --> 01:16:40.160
[Water runs gently]

01:17:02.840 --> 01:17:05.400
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
I know this bit, I know what they saw.

01:17:11.480 --> 01:17:13.320
OK then, describe it.

01:17:14.840 --> 01:17:17.520
I have. In paintings.

01:17:19.680 --> 01:17:21.400
[Serious cello music]

01:17:29.080 --> 01:17:30.680
[Distorted scribbling]

01:17:35.600 --> 01:17:36.880
[Music intensifies]

01:18:57.760 --> 01:18:59.120
[Music turns gentle]

01:19:02.880 --> 01:19:04.000
[Panting]

01:19:14.840 --> 01:19:17.440
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
It was like my brain.

01:19:20.320 --> 01:19:21.760
I seemed to see...

01:19:22.440 --> 01:19:23.400
my brain.

01:19:23.480 --> 01:19:24.680
[Panting continues]

01:19:37.480 --> 01:19:38.920
The glacier was...

01:19:40.920 --> 01:19:41.920
Me.

01:19:42.240 --> 01:19:43.360
Me.

01:19:43.440 --> 01:19:44.440
Me.

01:19:45.120 --> 01:19:46.000
Me.

01:19:46.080 --> 01:19:47.520
[Music turns pensive]

01:19:48.040 --> 01:19:49.640
I'm scratched now.

01:19:50.160 --> 01:19:51.560
And lined.

01:19:55.080 --> 01:19:56.560
Striated.

01:20:00.440 --> 01:20:02.080
And I have gaps.

01:20:05.480 --> 01:20:07.760
Many gaps in my memories.

01:20:10.520 --> 01:20:12.440
You are one of the gaps.

01:20:16.520 --> 01:20:18.560
But that day isn't.

01:20:28.560 --> 01:20:30.920
I wish I were you.

01:20:38.280 --> 01:20:40.040
I'm glad you are.

01:20:42.320 --> 01:20:43.840
I'm not.

01:20:47.800 --> 01:20:49.600
You're happier than I am.

01:20:51.240 --> 01:20:52.360
[Music fades out]

01:20:53.880 --> 01:20:56.280
But I'm a better painter than you.

01:20:56.760 --> 01:20:57.920
[Gentle panting]

01:21:02.040 --> 01:21:03.720
I've seen more.

01:21:10.160 --> 01:21:12.560
- [Panting continues]
- [Dramatic music]

01:21:18.600 --> 01:21:20.520
NARRATOR: Willie from a distance.

01:21:20.600 --> 01:21:21.880
Willie getting closer.

01:21:24.800 --> 01:21:26.360
[Chatter and laughter]

01:21:43.760 --> 01:21:44.760
[Gentle wind]

01:22:00.520 --> 01:22:01.640
[Squares thump]

01:22:13.720 --> 01:22:15.240
[Water runs nearby]

01:22:18.240 --> 01:22:23.240
NARRATOR: At least 100 Swiss glaciers
have disappeared since 1850.

01:22:25.960 --> 01:22:28.000
The Grindelwald glaciers have shrunk

01:22:28.800 --> 01:22:32.480
by at least 2 kilometres since the 1970s.

01:22:36.920 --> 01:22:39.840
Since 2000, the Alpine glaciers have lost

01:22:39.920 --> 01:22:44.200
over 26 cubic kilometres of ice.

01:22:45.240 --> 01:22:47.800
- [Music continues]
- [Sound of water fades out]

01:22:55.680 --> 01:22:58.200
LYNNE: The notion of a spiritual life

01:22:59.280 --> 01:23:03.080
and a non-material reality
was really important

01:23:03.800 --> 01:23:05.560
to the modernist movement.

01:23:09.000 --> 01:23:12.720
It's something to do
with platonic thought--

01:23:12.800 --> 01:23:15.400
Was that there is a perfect world

01:23:16.560 --> 01:23:22.560
which underlies-- or is the true world,
which underlies our perceived world.

01:23:26.120 --> 01:23:28.760
The notion of religion,
the notion of otherness,

01:23:28.840 --> 01:23:32.280
the notion of something--
some spiritual reality

01:23:32.960 --> 01:23:38.760
that one could embrace and be nurtured by
was seriously important for Willie.

01:23:38.840 --> 01:23:40.560
[Distorted scribbling]

01:23:41.560 --> 01:23:43.480
She needed that sense of...

01:23:44.280 --> 01:23:45.320
something else.

01:23:45.960 --> 01:23:47.640
And the-- that perfection.

01:23:47.720 --> 01:23:49.920
And I think it played into...

01:23:50.760 --> 01:23:52.960
erm, the sense of transparency

01:23:53.040 --> 01:23:56.120
that you find in her work
with the glaciers.

01:23:56.200 --> 01:24:00.280
The sense of-- of something beyond
the surface that you're looking at.

01:24:08.280 --> 01:24:11.560
MARK: Do you think-- she'd like the idea
of a film being made about her?

01:24:11.640 --> 01:24:12.640
Do you think?

01:24:13.920 --> 01:24:14.920
[Lynne laughs]

01:24:15.440 --> 01:24:17.960
LYNNE: Erm... Yes and no.

01:24:18.440 --> 01:24:21.520
I think... she would... love the idea.

01:24:22.080 --> 01:24:24.840
But like with the book,
she'd want to be very specific

01:24:24.920 --> 01:24:26.400
about what you included.

01:24:30.760 --> 01:24:33.040
NARRATOR: How close
have I got to Willie?

01:24:34.000 --> 01:24:35.640
- [Buzzing]
- [Music blasts]

01:24:35.720 --> 01:24:37.280
[Foil peels]

01:24:38.240 --> 01:24:41.080
TILDA SWINTON [VO]:
"I want to be alive and live,"

01:24:41.160 --> 01:24:42.240
NARRATOR: ...she wrote.

01:24:45.480 --> 01:24:47.560
WILLIE: I'd love to go back
and see how--

01:24:47.640 --> 01:24:50.760
with the moment, how-- how correct
my memory is of all this.

01:24:50.840 --> 01:24:53.800
It's so vivid in my mind,
but have I exaggerated it?

01:24:53.880 --> 01:24:55.200
[Brush swooshes]

01:24:59.000 --> 01:25:03.120
NARRATOR: Art critic Walter Pater
talked about "genius by accumulation."

01:25:04.880 --> 01:25:06.960
Willie studied wherever she went.

01:25:07.680 --> 01:25:10.200
She had a genius by accumulation.

01:25:11.560 --> 01:25:15.040
- Hers was a life of brain building.
- [Waves crashing gently]

01:25:16.160 --> 01:25:19.280
Her brain was changed
by the Grindelwald glacier.

01:25:19.920 --> 01:25:21.760
By the thinness of its air.

01:25:22.320 --> 01:25:24.640
The thickness of its effect.

01:25:26.280 --> 01:25:29.200
She pushed the limits of her mental world,

01:25:30.040 --> 01:25:33.720
or maybe, her mental world
pushed the limits of her.

01:25:35.080 --> 01:25:38.840
Her vast body of work was her bird's nest.

01:25:40.160 --> 01:25:43.040
In a way, her eyes were not involved.

01:25:43.120 --> 01:25:45.280
Her retinas had done their work.

01:25:46.440 --> 01:25:49.520
She built her nest
from thoughts about form.

01:25:49.960 --> 01:25:50.960
Joy.

01:25:51.040 --> 01:25:52.080
God.

01:25:52.160 --> 01:25:53.240
Landscape.

01:25:54.560 --> 01:25:57.520
She was in the spirit
of Raphael and Rilke.

01:26:00.560 --> 01:26:03.720
Did Wilhelmina Barns-Graham know herself?

01:26:03.800 --> 01:26:05.080
[Wind blows gently]

01:26:39.400 --> 01:26:42.960
[Glacier crackles and thumps
in the distance, wind blows]

01:27:59.840 --> 01:28:02.160
Captions: Alicja Tokarska
Screen Language