Turning form (Atlantic) demonstrates Barbara Hepworth's response to the Cornish coastline with which she once admitted to have become ‘bewitched’. Alan Bowness writes, 'Many of the drawings of the 1960s were made within view of the sea, in a studio overlooking the Atlantic beach of Porthmeor, and the movement of tides and the forms of the wave patterns on the sea-shore sometimes provide their immediate inspiration' (A. Bowness, Barbara Hepworth Drawings from a Sculptor's Landscape, London, 1966, p. 25). This sense of movement can be felt in Turning form (Atlantic): the oval hollow of the forms evoke the jutting rocks and windswept beaches of Cornwall, and the pattern of curved and straight pencil lines, so reminiscent of her stringed sculptures, seems to imply the rise and fall of waves, or the vibrations of wind. Hepworth's use of azure blue pigment also serves to suggest the sensation of the surrounding sea and sky.

In Turning form (Atlantic), Hepworth has applied pigment and rubbed it away in areas, eroding the surface to suggest a texture reminiscent of the natural wear of the sea and wind upon rocks. Hepworth compared the process of her picture-making to that of making sculpture, reinforcing the tangibility and physicality of her pictures: 'When I am making a drawing, I like to begin with a board which I have prepared with a definite texture and tone. I like to rub and scrape the surfaces as I might handle the surface of a sculpture' (B. Hepworth, quoted in H. Read, (ed.), Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, London, 1952, pp. 68-69).

We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for this work. Dr Sophie Bowness is preparing the revised catalogue raisonné of Hepworth’s paintings and drawings.