The Art of Edwina Sandys: A 40 Year Retrospective

The Art of Edwina Sandys

at the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden – West Palm Beach

Quotation from the invitation

"Edwina Sandy’s works goes from the sacred to the secular, addressing politics and society. Sandys has tackled big ideas while combining the lighthearted, the profound, the playful and mind provoking. The British born artist’s appeal lies in her diverse subject matter and clearly recognizable style using positive and negative images to powerful effects."

I had never visited the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden; having been under the misconception that it is was an appendage to the Norton Museum. It is Not. It is the former home of Ralph Hubbard Norton (founder of the Norton Museum) and his second wife, Ann. She was a significant modern artist in the 40’s through the 70’s and turned her house, studio and glorious gardens into a museum to display her sculptures, many created in bricks, others in stone and wood, all mammoth in size. Mrs. Norton’s other passion was trees and tropical plants. The magnificent garden serves as home for both. A visit is a feast for the eyes.

On special occasions the space is offered to worthy artists for exhibits of their work. My friend Edwina Sandys is a beneficiary of this largesse. This is an eye-filling forty year retrospective of her drawings, paintings and sculpture.

life is a party 2002 - a segment of a painting, showing Edwina in full force using color & humor

Edwina thrives on thinking outside of the box. Her wicked sense of humor is evident in all of her work. Her drawings and painting are the musing of her creative mind. She is a free spirit – a feminist – a biblical scholar - a politician with a sardonic sense of humor and a consummate artist. She creates with an assured hand, delineating her ideas in strong single strokes with paintbrush, pen, or marble. Her sculpture is an extension of her works on paper and canvas and often they are intertwined. Her paintings and drawing are a kaleidoscope of vivid colors. By contrast, her sculptures, whether working in Carrara marble or metal - the dominant color is white. Her monumental silhouettes become the canvas for her fluent brush-strokes. Naked torsos, faces, fauna and flora are embellished with a minimalist touch of black and red. She exploits negative space skillfully. The void left by the cut-out often reappear as a solid figure as a part of the sculpture. There are works devoted to the interaction of Man and Woman. Hands are often a favorite subject and can appear as cut-outs, hair or holding the apple that Eve presented to Adam.

Edwina with two of her sculptures using negative and positive cut-outs. 2005

Walk through a gate into a cloistered, secret garden and you are confronted with a cache of biblical figures; satirical life-sized women and men, heroines and scoundrels, all in stark white silhouettes accompanied with a fitting quotation from the Old Testament.

From the Biblical series: Delilah having just cut-off Samson's hair - in the Ann Norton Garden

Rachel 1986 - Polypropylene and mixed media - from the series: Women of the Bible

Salome 1986 - doing her dance of the seven veils

(These works have not been seen for over a quarter of a century. Since being exhibited in 1987 at the Everson Museum Syracuse and the National Museum of Women in Arts, Washington DC. They have been stored in gigantic crates in a Florida warehouse.)

Her feminist side is evident in a provocative crucifix, which, upon closer examination depicts Christ as a naked woman: Christa. She provoked frenzied attention worldwide when it was first shown in London in 1975. Christa achieved further notoriety when she was exhibited in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during holy week in 1984. The work was acclaimed and defiled. The reverend James Parks Morton, Dean of the Cathedral had this to say: “All hell broke loose. The press was there. Films were being made of Christa all day. The news hit Rome on Easter Day: ‘Episcopal Cathedral in New York has female Christ’ that went over really swimmingly at the Vatican. Christa became an incredible learning experience for people in the Church, and churches all over the world.”

Christa 1975 - The crucifix that set the religious world topsy-turfy

Eve proffering the Apple 1998

Tulips under the Brooklyn Bridge 2007

Edwina's creative use of hands in her sculpture

Edwina Sandys’ work has been exhibited in museums, worldwide as well as the United Nations, the World Trade Center, on the median of Park Avenue.

She is a wonderful friend… Her art speaks for itself and she needs no further kudos, but coincidentally, she also happens to be the granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill, and has inherited his is high spirited and incisive mind together with his talent as a painter. Churchill plays a subtle role in many of her works. (I own two lithographs: one depicts Churchill seen from the back, painting one of his favorite scenes: Chartwell. The other, Romeo Revisited is a still life with a photo of Churchill lurking in the background surrounded by his beloved cigars wine an cognac.)