Sandra Smith

Sandra Smith is a painter who was trained at Wimbledon School of Art and the RCA. She is an artist/educator. She paints landscape in the broadest sense. Her practice explores place, memory and belonging, using painting as a way to reconstruct the spaces and environments she has lived in or moved through. Her work brings together drawing, geometry, mapping and painterly processes, combining structure with a strong sensitivity to surface, light and atmosphere.

The works on show relate to 2 large landscape paintings referencing images from WGC that are entangled with one another. One is from the towns’ industrial past and one from the geology in which it is sited. The white grain silos of WGC have always dominated the centre of the town. From the vantage point of the hill above Digswell that locals call ‘High Welwyn’, the Shredded Wheat silos sit higher than any other edifice on the horizon.. Between the town and High Welwyn is the valley of the river Mimram, one of Englands rare chalk streams. Waves of trees sweep south across the valley towards the town, obscuring most the buildings. The paintings show a strong use of orchestration through proportion and design. The bilateral symmetry of the landscape mirrors the body of the viewer. The factory is painted from chalk dug from the field from which it is viewed. The split fields of colour reflect different seasons and times of day. The paintings are her engagement with this landscape during her time at DAT.