Early in her career as a sculptor, Barbara Hepworth (January 10, 1903 – May 20, 1975) argued that the contemplation of nature renews our best self; "our sense of mystery and our imagination is kept alive, and rightly understood, it gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract sense of beauty."

Echoing the sentiments of many who found life's pale removed by our spirit's immersion in natural beauty, it is unsurprising that Hepworth's work manifests that beauty.

Barbara Hepworth's 'Winged Figure' on John Lewis department store on Oxford Street, London. "I wanted to capture the greatest variety of light and shadow, from morning sun, afternoon reflected light and night floodlighting, so that visually the sculpture never remained static."

Working realistically replenishes one's love for life, humanity, and the earth. Working abstractly seems to release one's personality and sharpen the perceptions so that in the observation of life, it is the wholeness or inner intention that moves one so profoundly: the components fall into place, and the detail is significant of unity.
From 'Sculpture', Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Hepworth was a British sculptor who created vivid modernist shapes and figures. Writings and Conversations gathers Hepworth's articles, essays, and interviews from 1933 until she died in 1975.

A constructive work is an embodiment of freedom itself and is unconsciously perceived even by those who are consciously against it. The desire to live is the strongest universal emotion; it springs from the depths of our unconscious sensibility - and the desire to give life is our most potent, constructive, conscious expression of this intuition.
Extract from a letter to art critic Herbert Read, March 1948

Though the collection spans decades, Hepworth is clear on certain things: what drives her, the roles of fear and freedom, the difference between modeling and carving (and why she prefers the latter),   "Carving to me is more interesting than modelling, because there is an unlimited variety of materials from which to draw inspiration. Each material demands a particular treatment and there are an infinite number of subjects in life each to be re-created in a particular material. In fact, it would be possible to carve the same subject in a different stone each time, throughout life, without a repetition of form."        
Excerpt from 'Contemporary English Sculptors', 1930.
"I have always preferred direct carving to modelling because I like the resistance of the hard material and feel happier working that way. Carving is more adapted to the expression of the accumulation idea of experience and clay to the visual attitude. An idea for carving must be clearly formed before starting and sustained during the long process of working."        
Excerpt from 'The Aim of the Modern Artist: Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson', 1932.  the defining feeling of presence in her work.

 Bronze cast sculpture model for "Meridian" by Barbara Hepworth. New College, Oxford. "It is part of my conviction as a sculptor to treat the maquette and the scale model as complete works."

Although Hepworth abstains from defining "sculpture," she does allow that through it, "[y]ou can open the door to a fuller understanding."   Sculpture was much more to Hepworth than form or figure. In fact, the sculpting itself was a large aspect of the work, echoing German critic Walter Benjamin, who believed art must be connected to its location and creation.  
Hepworth said in 1961, "I have always loved the joy of carving and the rhythm of movement that grows in the sculpture itself, just as I like dancing or skating. I like the relaxation of sound and movement. When I am carving, or when I am listening to someone else carving, I know what is happening not by what I see, but by what I hear."        
One of my favorite writers, E.B. White, once said he "wrote by ear," echoing this wonderful concept of listening to an oft-silenced inner voice of creativity and insight. Or, in Hepworth's case, listening to the material.

I call it Figure and indeed, in my mind, it is a figure. It has a presence, every figure has a presence. In fact, you can barely have any standing object, which doesn't, except engineering-wise, which doesn't take one to the presence of the figure in landscape.
Interview with Robert Sharpe at Trewyn Studio, St. Ives, 1971.

Although Hepworth is less known than her contemporary, Henry Moore, she has recently become more popular and better understood due to exhibitions like Tate's 2015 Retrospective. Hepworth's work is also on full-time exhibit at the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire.   Landscape was intensely meaningful for Hepworth; many of her pieces echoed landscapes of her native Yorkshire and adult residence in St. Ives, Cornwall.        
She once stated that landscape demanded a figure, a presence. And "very often I am the figure in landscape, and my own reaction to the environment takes shape as a new family or a new sculpture. This is really the concrete evidence of what I was feeling in a given situation, and I always hope that the chain of events is completed by spectator."        
For Hepworth, a spectator's interaction with sculpture depended highly on visualization as well as touch (a resoundingly critical sense).  
Learn more about her beloved St. Ives here.

"Two Turning Forms" and other work by Barbara Hepworth. Hepworth Wakefield Collection. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

I'm a North Country-woman. I was born in Wakefield and brought up in Yorkshire. I was profoundly influenced by Yorkshire. My father used to drive me all over the Dales. But what I was lacking in Yorkshire I only discovered when I was in Italy and that was light. In my work, I always used light a great deal. I test everything I do by sunlight, and by moonlight, and in rain greyness. This place is like Yorkshire and the Mediterranean, and I need them both.
Edwin Mullins, 'Hepworth at Home, ' The Daily Telegraph Supplement, 1966

Hepworth saw a place in its physicality, apart from meaning. Lines and formations change over time. Like fellow British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, whose consistent shapes echoed the landscape, Hepworth knew her work had to dialogue with the landscape and yet stand apart. The human form must be part of the experience.

I cannot write anything about landscape without writing about the human figure and human spirit inhabiting the landscape. For me, the whole art of sculpture is the fusion of these two elements - the balance of sensation and evocation of man in this universe. At an early age, I began to observe the movements and behaviour of people, to study their posture and gestures, and anticipation what was about to happen. Were people around me ill, or cross, or anxious?
'A Sculptor's Landscape, ' Barbara Hepworth: Drawings from a Sculptor's Landscape, 1966

At Hepworth's studio garden in St. Ives, where she produced most of her work, see—and touch—many of her pieces. Her combination of shapes, lines, and even materials in such proportion makes one feel something unspoken. Lines or holes are often added—why?

Perhaps something was missing yet undiscovered?

 Barbara Hepworth in her St. Ives Studio.

I think she leaves space for wonder, for some divine unknown. A quest that has stirred many artists like Hermann Hesse and Mary Oliver). Or for, in the words of E. F. Schumacher, "the X element that makes us human."

I do not like drama in sculpture. To me, drama has its fulfillment in time and space - not in being arrested in concrete material. I want to achieve a 'presence' in my sculptures of such a kind that they remain true and valid in all moods. The sense of humanity and compassion, perhaps one could call it the religious apprehension, seems far more important in giving a sculpture this special countenance which can remain eternal."
The Sculptor Speaks', recorded talk for the British Council, 1961

Writings and Conversation's carefully curated essays and interviews offer essential personal insight into an artist driven by the contemplation of the mystery that propels us through imagination and into art.

"Pierced Form" by Barbara Hepworth, 1960. Carved from Nigerian guarea wood. Learn more. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Hepworth is my favorite sculptor. Her love of materiality, respect for space, and raw emotional presence are meaningful (more so after I saw her St. Ives studio). This book is a gift, and so is she.

Supplement Hepworth's sublime insights with Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, a work that mixes poetics, illusion, and imagery to localize some of our most abstract self-concepts. Or read alongside the poetry of Ocean Vuong, which arrests abstract concepts like love, pain, and loss in physical spaces like bodies, skies, and seas.