A solo show by artist, Sandra Porter, opens at Black Swan Arts in Frome on 1st June.
The exhibition, ‘All Things Being Equal’, features a series of small- and large-scale drawings, collages, prints and paintings which explore grids, stripes and recurrent schemes – images that are similar but not the same. Sandra’s work involves ‘ever evolving improvisations around the grid and the search for a synthesis between the horizontal and vertical together, with the all-important negotiation of monochrome, colour and definitive mark’.
Sandra finds inspiration in architecture – from the cupolas of St Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, to the marble stripes of Siena Cathedral and, most recently, the humble corrugated iron ‘bothans’ seen on a trip to the Isle of Skye. “It seems to me that I see examples of “my work” all over the place!’ she says. ‘I soak up influences wherever I go.”
Sandra began by making representational prints and drawings but her work has gradually become more abstract. However, it still acknowledges its architectural origins – qualities that are evident in the Aequitas, Caraid and Didymus prints which feature in the exhibition.
After leaving Chelsea School of Art in 1981 with an MA in fine art painting, Sandra worked as a teacher and lecturer. She studied intaglio printmaking techniques during the 1990s at Morley College under the late Dorothea Wight, which has gone on to underpin both her own art practice and her teaching career. Sandra moved back to the West Country 20 years ago to work at Wiltshire College. She left in 2012 to concentrate on her own work, and now teaches and works from her studio in Norton St Philip.
Sandra became a Royal West of England Academician in 2017 and she has been a member of the Bath Society of Artists since 2016. Her work is in public and private collections, including the Tate and V&A Libraries and UK Government Art Collection. She has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, and her work has been selected for, among many others, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, the Royal Academy Summer Show and Sunday Times Watercolour Competition.
The preview will take place on Friday 31st May from 6–8pm – everyone is welcome to come along.
For further information, please visit www.blackswan arts.org.uk.
