Saw a magnificent Koros – tall, fierce and passionate bigger than life size – in the Museum. A heavenly work – the backs and buttocks in relation to … - Barbara Hepworth

I have been deeply interested during the last ten years in the use of colour with form. I have applied oil colour – white, grey, and blues of different degrees of tone.. .I have been very influenced by the natural colour and luminosity in stones and woods and the change in colour as light travels over the surface contours. When I pierced the material tight through a great change seemed to take place in the concavities from which direct light was excluded. From this experience my use of colour developed.

I'm involved in everything. I read just as I was in the thirties during the Spanish War and Franco and everything. And after all there's not a great deal of difference between the 'Monument to the Spanish War', a group of things one on top of the other, that I lost and 'The family of Man', [Hepworth made in 1970]. I mean I've always been involved. I was involved in industry in my home town. I was involved in the distress and the strikes. I wasn't marching but I was involved through my work.

I have gained very great inspiration from the Cornish land- and seascape, the horizontal line of the sea and the quality of light and colour which reminds me of the Mediterranean light and colour which so excites one’s sense of form; and first and last there is the human figure which in the country becomes a free and moving part of a greater whole. This relationship between figure and landscape is vitally important to me. I cannot feel it in a city.