Sandra Bloodworth

Bloodworth, internationally known as the director of MTA Arts & Design, is an accomplished artist who came to New York as a figurative painter in 1980.  To support her painting career, she used her arts administration experience and training to secure her position in the public art field, where she has been instrumental in building one of the most respected public art collections in the world.

While Bloodworth is more widely known as a figurative painter, her still life paintings capture the intimacy with the people and environment around her.  Intimate Feasts is a series of 80 paintings created over four years that recordthe tablescape and meals prepared by Bloodworth and her husband, Fred May, whom she refers to as her muse.  Bloodworth speaks of her work, “Meals, flowers, and portraits are all subjects that are close to my heart and with which I have a close relationship in my practice as a painter.  I often set out to capture, with lush images, my life as it is shared with my partner.  The work is intimate and personal and often about the desire for love, good times, and abundance.”

The twenty-four-inch canvases are layers of analogous and complementary colors, colors that build a painted narrative: a burgundy wine tablecloth adjacent to magenta peonies; Naples and cadmium yellows flowing across the canvas moving from printed tablecloths to flowers and oval grape tomatoes create a desire to delve into the scene and be consumed with its lusciousness. William Ris East Gallery Owner Mary Cantone said, “Sandra Bloodworth’s work is a perfect fit for our Northfork gallery.  She brings the tradition of southern story-telling into her narrative paintings and engages the viewer to look closer and experience the richness in the layers of her work.”

Born in Charleston, Mississippi, Bloodworth received an MFA from Florida State University.  While at university, she studied with British abstract painter Trevor Bell and printmakers Arthur Deshaies and William Walmsley. Bloodworth, based in New York, has exhibited nationally. Her work is included in the Bethany Mission Gallery in Philadelphia, which houses the private collection of Victor Keen.  Bloodworth was the 2015 recipient of the Artist’sFellowship Gari Melchers Award.