Good morning everyone,

What is up? Thanks to a submission from a friend and subscriber I have a belting newsletter for you today of geometric shapes and "joyous invention". I hope that it works for you.

Let's start with Bridget Riley, and her piece for the LRB about, I suppose, discovering squares all over again. This is a lovely description of how it feels to create something good:

I drew the first few squares. No discoveries there. Was there anything to be found in a square? But as I drew, things began to change. Quite suddenly something was happening down there on the paper that I had not anticipated. I continued, I went on drawing; I pushed ahead, both intuitively and consciously. The squares began to lose their original form. They were taking on a new pictorial identity. I drew the whole of Movement in Squares without a pause and then, to see more clearly what was there, I painted each alternate space black. When I stepped back, I was surprised and elated by what I saw. The painting Movement in Squares came directly out of this study. My experience of working with the square was to prove crucial. Having been lately becalmed, now a strong wind filled my sails.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n19/bridget-riley/at-the-end-of-my-pencil

Now, how about Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, modernist and Fifer? Known as "Willie" – a quite common nickname for a woman in Fife and as far as I know nowhere else in the UK –  she gave us seven decades of work:

In old age, however, despite physical weakness, she discovered a serenity that came out in a series of radiant works in the 1980s and 1990s. She no longer found it necessary to pose questions, or set conundrums, still less to look over her shoulder at what others were doing. She no longer had to work doggedly through some course of work she had set herself years before, or fear that something she painted was not quite "characteristic". In practice her work always was so, whether she chose to express herself through representation or joyous invention.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jan/29/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

And now you can enjoy this joyous invention for yourself! Jeni Allison has made a knitting pattern of one of Wilhemina Barns-Graham's ties. You can download it here and knit your own modernist tie:

In the mid-1980s, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham designed and knitted a collection of over 50 stunning unique wool ties. Some of these ties were recently shared on the Trust’s Instagram account as inspiration for an activity to do while we are all shut in at home […] The ties received an enthusiastic response, especially so from knitwear designer and design educator Jeni Allison who offered to create a DIY knitting pattern for one of them.

https://www.barns-grahamtrust.org.uk/The-Trust/News/News-113.html

Happy Friday, friends!

Alex.