Blinks

When I was at art school perched on a high stool with a pigtail down my back, I was painting a shell, its mother-of-pearl captivating me—the principal of the art school, Byam Shaw, came up behind me and said, "Oh, Roberts," that was my maiden name, "what colours you are seeing today." [continue...]

Written by Winifred Nicholson in 1979 for a touring exhibition of her eighty years' work.

Radiance in the Grass

The art of colour is an unsociable art. The arts of poetry, dancing, singing, music, drama, all are sociable to one another and like to mingle . . . The dictator arts like sculpture and architecture would like to think colour can mingle, and they try to nail it down—but away it flies . . . [continue...]

First published in the Christian Science Monitor, 1978.

King Pellinore's Wife

When King Pellinore found his castle rocking and tossing and falling down whenever he built it up, none of the magicians or wise men or astrologers could tell him why . . . [continue...]

The Flower's Response

I like painting flowers—I have tried to paint many things in many different ways, but my paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower—and I think I know why this is so. [continue...]

[Spring 1969]

I Like to Have a Picture in my Room

I like to have a picture in my room. Why? Without one, my room feels bare however much furniture I may have; and I will tell you the part that a true picture plays, and that nothing else can play, in my room. [continue...]

Unknown Colour

Colour has been used chiefly in the past as a means to display form—form being thought of as its obvious master. The freedom of abstract thought has come, and shows us a future lying ahead of colour as one of the three great abstract arts. Mathematics—music—colour. To those artists whose inspiration comes in the form of shape and shape relationships, colour may continue to be the means of expressing those shapes, unless it be that they find that light and shade is a more suitable means for their purpose. [continue...]

First published under the name Winifred Dacre in CIRCLE: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937 (reprinted 1971), Faber and Faber.