Having grown up twenty miles from Barbara Hepworth’s place of birth and where she spent her formative years, I unashamedly declare a northern, West Yorkshire affinity with the extraordinarily inspirational 20th century sculptor. We both left Yorkshire to study in London (Hepworth in 1921, myself in 1985); and we were both indelibly imprinted with the texture and form of the gritty West Riding of Yorkshire landscape.
The capricious, often harsh weather that blasts over the hills and through the valleys chisels sculptural boulders and tirelessly readjusts the filter through which you experience the expansive moorland tones. This place, this atmosphere, has been the muse of so many creatives. For novelists, think Charlotte Brontë; poets, Ian McMillan and Simon Armitage; painters,
