Patrick Heron not only painted � mostly in an abstract style � but also wrote about art. Something you don�t find very much in artists. Inevitably this led him into conflict with the arch interpreter of US Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg. But that�s probably a story for another day.

I read today a review he wrote of Barbara Hepworth�s first retrospective exhibition. He saw BH as the kind of sculptor who produced a controlled mass arrived at by manipulating the continuous skin of the form. She was drawn to the perfection of organic geometry found in shells, seed pods or water hollowed rock.

Compared to many commentators who like to find gendered themes in her interest in curves , tunnels and openings, PH sees her at her best when she is coldly logical and least anthropomorphic. Her approach, in his view, is to gouge and scoop her way into the main body of her sculpture � from outside in. Her visual poetry is of �unparalleled coldness and aloofness� � she celebrates �clean clear cold forces of nature.� Her work emerges from a visual rather than a felt artistic sensibility.

I was pretty impressed with this although I wasn�t sure that I agreed with all of it. Remember that they both lived in the same place � St Ives � at around the same time and were both increasingly drawn to abstraction. The place itself is full of clean clear forces of nature, visual stimulation, eroded rock. One might think that he had a reasonable idea of what BH would say about her work.

What I have read of her theorising suggests that she may not agree on the judgement about visual and felt sensibility. She talks about feeling and form a lot .

Maybe the reason I can�t get all that far into her work is that it seems full of feeling which is cold, aloof, controlled and also gendered.