A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things (2024)

One of the most important women in British modern art, the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a highly inspirational figure, whose work was deeply impacted by a pivotal event in her life. In May 1949, this leading representative of the modernist St Ives group of artists climbed to the top of the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland, an experience which was to transform the way she saw the world. She spent the rest of her life capturing its shapes and colours, indeed its very essence. In his essayistic portrait documentarist Mark Cousins delves into complex themes of gender, climate change and creativity, while laying bare the artist’s character and vast imagination so pervasively that he creates the impression we are seeing the world through her eyes.