Sandra Blow made her impactful abstract compositions using both traditional and unusual materials. For Green and White, she incorporated blended ash made from burning nuts in her studio stove. While the painting was still unfinished, someone entered Blow’s studio and slashed the canvas with a knife. Determined not to ‘lose the painting’, she sewed the edges together and stuck a strip of canvas on the back and front, then painted over it. ‘Miraculously… it was a perfect conclusion to the whole painting’, she said.
Sandra Blow's early association with Alberto Burri continued to underpin her work throughout her life. She liked to work with collage as one element of her paintings and screen prints and she maintained that events in her personal life often affected the appearance of her work, in the tensions and clashes of the jostling marks on the canvas. Her later work became relaxed and colourful, particularly after she moved from London to live in St Ives.
Sandra Blow made her impactful abstract compositions using both traditional and unusual materials. For Green and White, she incorporated blended ash made from burning nuts in her studio stove. While the painting was still unfinished, someone entered Blow’s studio and slashed the canvas with a knife. Determined not to ‘lose the painting’, she sewed the edges together and stuck a strip of canvas on the back and front, then painted over it. ‘Miraculously… it was a perfect conclusion to the whole painting’, she said.