Mark Cousins and Wendy Mitchell on A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

A creative biography of the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. 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.  

 

A Sudden Glimpse into Deeper Things feature documentary is Mark Cousins' love letter to Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, a significant yet often overlooked British modernist painter.

True to Cousins' unique style, the film takes different angles to investigate her legacy, combining an account of Barns-Graham's climb to the top of a glacier in Switzerland that was pivotal to her art, a lengthy contemplation over one of her photographs as an elderly woman, and a documentation of his acquisition of a Barns-Graham-inspired tattoo. As with all love letters, Cousins' exploration of Barns-Graham's innovative mind is deeply personal and idiosyncratic, weaving together fragments of her life and art in a complex tapestry.

Writer and director Mark Cousins joins us for a post-screening Q&A about the film.