A visionary who carved Space & Form
Week Two's colours are Pistachio, Heather, Grey Blue & Deep Olive
New for 2026 - Find this week’s shapes at the bottom of the post!
Barbara Hepworth’s birthday has just past (10 January) and she happens to be the second artist I featured when the Coloricombo weekly prompts first started back in January 2022. That prompt’s colours came from one of her series of Hospital Drawings from the late 1940s.
For this week’s Coloricombo prompt the the colours are selected from one of Hepworth’s wall based artworks rather than one of her iconic sculptures.
Hepworth (1903-1975) was born in Wakefield, England and was one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century. She attended Leeds School of Art together another Yorkshire born sculptor, Henry Moore, beginning a friendship and rivalry that would shape both their careers.
‘Perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood and the rest of one’s life is spent trying to say it. I know that all I felt during the early years of my life in Yorkshire is dynamic and constant in my life today.’
- Barbara Hepworth
After studying at the Royal College of Art in London and a scholarship learning stone carving in Italy, her work became entirely abstract and in 1931 she sculpted her first pierced figure, a characteristic synonymous with both her own and Moore’s future work.
In 1939, Hepworth moved to St Ives in Cornwall with the artist Ben Nicholson and their children. The Cornish landscape became central to her work and she stated that all my sculpture comes out of landscape. Their studios became a haven for artists during the Second World War and was the basis for the modern art movement the St. Ives School.
The Hospital Drawings series I mentioned earlier came about after Hepworth’s daughter was hospitalised in 1944. She struck up a friendship with the surgeon Norman Capener who invited her to attend surgical procedures. Between 1947 and 1949 she produced nearly eighty drawings of operating rooms in chalk, ink and pencil.
The couple moved to Trewyn Studios in St. Ives in 1949 where Hepworth would work until her death. During the 1950s, her reputation grew exponentially when she exhibited at the Venice Biennale, won prizes internationally and began working on monumental public commissions.
Hepworth was made a Dame in 1965, and at the time of her tragic death (a fire at her studio caused by a cigarette) in 1975 was regarded as the world’s greatest woman sculptor. Her studio is now the Barbara Hepworth Museum and is run by Tate.
‘I rarely draw what I see. I draw what I feel in my body.’
- Barbara Hepworth
Read more about Hepworth here and here. There’s an article about how the landscape of Yorkshire influenced both Moore and Hepworth here.
“Forms in Space”, pencil, gouache and crayon on board, Barbara Hepworth 1946
Colour Combination
The colours this week are Pistachio, Heather, Grey Blue & Deep Olive. Use the colours along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Share this post with someone who likes colour and might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity.
Shapes
This year I started to add a shape to the weekly prompts for some extra inspiration. Here’s this week’s, inspired by a Hepworth sculptural piece called Three Forms in Echelon from 1961. Use it as you choose. You can download it as a PDF below.
It is fun to see what you create with the prompts, thank you for sharing your creations. If you’re posting on Instagram, please tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod and join us in the private Facebook group Creative Prompts.
Thank you for sharing and pulling out the quotes regarding childhood and embodied creating. Whether realistic, abstract, or somewhere in between—line moves from a place deep within, it feels original and is embodied. The humble line communicates volumes, connects, forms shape and dimensions, has rhythm, carries feeling, is a traveler in time/space. Line moves through like music, like dance. Color is a field where lines play. And childhood is a whole other world from which memory now draws. Thanks for helping me to see, for shedding a little more light on authentic creativity—line and connection have always been very important to me.
Thank you for Barbara's works and her story. Colors are gorgeous as are the shapes. In all respect, could you tell us what it means to be a "Dame"? Is this still done? Thanks.