Welcome to DES Talks, our podcast exploring creativity across Scotland, presented by Susanna Beaumont. 

She looks forward to sharing with you inspiring conversations with some of the most adventurous, curious and brilliant designers, artists, makers and curators. We talk ideas and inspiration, challenges and influences, the contemporary and the historic. 

In this episode, we explore the life and work of the brilliant artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham with Rob Airey, director of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust and Mark Cousins, the renowned Edinburgh-based Northern Irish filmmaker. We discuss her work and the making of Mark's extraordinary film, A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, which celebrates her life and mind.

Willie, as she was known throughout her life, was born in St Andrews in 1912 and studied at Edinburgh College of Art and went on to live in Cornwall's St Ives within its celebrated community of artists and writers. Exploring landscape and pushing towards abstraction, it was a trip to Switzerland in 1949 to climb the Grindelwald glacier that promoted Willie to dive ever more deeply into texture, colour and form. She died in 2004.

Explore Willie's work on the Barns-Graham Trust website.
Watch A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things on BFI player. There is soon to be released a Blu-Ray / DVD version of the film.
Read Mark Cousins interviewed by the BFI.
Earth Matters at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh until 1 November
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham - Nature in Motion at Museum Belvédère, the Netherlands 20 June - 20 September 2026
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham at Tate St Ives 24 October 2026  - 11 April 2027

Thanks so much for listening to DES Talks. Please do spread the word, share, subscribe and rate and rave! We really want to share these conversations far and wide. 

And don’t forget to explore our previous 12 podcasts such as Viv Lee and Jonathan Wade talking clay and the making of Earth Becoming for Earth Matters, the exhibition I curated with Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh at Inverleith House or our conversation on the work of Donald Locke, the Guyanese artist who studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1960s whose solo show is currently on at Camden Arts Centre, London. 

Huge thanks to musician Malin Lewis for Cycle Lane which accompanies DES Talks and Ryan Scott Media for production.