She studied and worked in Scotland and in 1940 moved to Cornwall, where she became a member of the St Ives School of artists. There she met and worked alongside the painter Ben Nicholson and sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

These two depictions of subjects from nature – Green Skull Form I and Glacier – show the influence of the St Ives artists on Barns-Graham’s work. They now join the collection of the Hepworth Wakefield, where they have many resonances with the gallery’s holdings of work by
Hepworth and her circle.