Sam Ainsley

Sam Ainsley is an artist and teacher. From 1985-1991 she taught on the Environmental Art Course at Glasgow School of Art (GSA). She co-founded the Master of Fine Art course and was the programme Director from its inception until 2006. A respected and published spokeswoman for the visual arts Ainsley has contributed to a broad range of visual art initiatives in Scotland. Ainsley has exhibited in and curated independent exhibitions in numerous institutions and arts organisations across the USA, Australasia, Europe and the UK. Her work is in a number of public and private collections nationally and internationally
Skeleton Leaves
acrylic paint on digital print, 102 x 102 cm

£3950
North by Northeast
acrylic paint on digital print, 102 x 102 cm

£3950
Skeleton Leaves
acrylic paint on digital print, 102 x 102 cm

£3950
Making a Heart Like Stone
acrylic paint on digital print, 102 x 102 cm

£3950
Red Nuclear Landscape
acrylic paint on digital print, 102 x 102 cm

£3950
Homage to D'Arcy Thompson,
acrylic paint on digital print, 102 x 102 cm

£3950
D'ARCY WENTWORTH THOMPSON


WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM - 'ON GROWTH AND FORM'
Paintings and Drawings 1950_2002


D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson had a profound influence on the work of Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns_Graham. She remarked in a 1981 exhibition catalogue that, as a child growing up in St Andrews, she knew the professor. Not only was Thompson a prominent figure around town, but he was a friend of the Barns-Graham family. Further to this childhood connection, Barns-Graham added “…very many years later I discovered his wonderful enlightening book 'Growth & Form'.” (Untitled, LYC Press, 1981)

Professor D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form was a widely influential book, particularly with visual artists. Published first in 1917 and revised in 1942, this volume was taken up by the eminent art critic Herbert Read in the 1940s, and through his writings came to the notice of many leading artists of the period. D'Arcy Thompson's concepts resonated with artists who were seeking to reconcile the new art of abstraction with the natural world. His application of precise mathematical models to the morphology of organisms according to their laws of growth underscores Barns-Graham's own investigations into natural forms and her outwardly abstract imagery. Thompson's ideas on the relation between inner space and outer form were particularly important. These are reflected in the sculptures of Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth that Barns_Graham was fully aware of in St Ives. In Barn-Graham's own work, such concerns feature in, for example, her glacier studies of 1949-50 and in the later series of small drawings that explore the visible and invisible energies of sea waves and wind currents. (GLASS CASES)

As part of the discussion on the application of mathematics to organic form, D'Arcy Thompson refers to the proportion of the 'divine' or The Golden Section in nature where a system of numbers, similar to the related Fibonacci series, is applied to the ratio of growth. In terms of art, this system is used to divide space, determining the perfect rectangle with its many and various sub-divisions. This complex set of divisions often lies as the sub-structure in Barns-Graham's paintings.