theEYE: Sandra Blow

theEYE: Sandra Blow

Synopsis

Three spectacular canvases by Sandra Blow were one of the highlights of the 2006 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Sadly, this was her last show, as she died in August that year. This film was made in her studio in St. Ives as she was preparing to submit her works, and it captures her remarkable character and her fascinating reflections on a lifetime creating beautiful, rigorous, distinctive and joyous paintings. Sandra Blow spent a formative year as a student in Italy in the late 1940s, and she returned to London to begin a distinguished career dedicated to developing her vigorous abstract art. In addition to paint, she worked with a diverse range of materials, including sacking, plaster and coloured paper collages, and while her work often referred to landscape and to architecture, it was always exploring ideas of pure form and colour, balance and chance, light and movement.