Photo: Sir Terry Frost, RA. (1915-2003) Photo by Andrew Dunkley © Tate

One of Britain's leading visual artists, Sir Terry Frost, died earlier last year. Many tributes to Terry's life and work have appeared in the national press: he was a influential figure to many artists in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Few may appreciate, however, that one of his best shows was his last. Frost's Tate St. Ives showing in February 2003, part of an omnibus project called 'Painting Not Painting,' was a splash of fresh paint. It was bold, physically challenging - and a great success. At the heart of the show was an ambitious installation painting, Contrasts In Red, Black and White (2002/2003) built from 27 separate canvases, each one relating to the next, all tailored to one specific space within Tate St .Ives. Tate St. Ives Director Susan Daniel-McElroy worked closely with Terry for many months to get the show finished. She tells 24 Hour Museum about this last creative burst by Terry, and what it was like to visit his studio. I was always received with charm and humour. He was lovely. I have to say I always felt privileged to go to such a happy household. The house was filled with work, from all the periods of his life." "And so you went into his house and you got this wonderful impression of colour everywhere. Not filled, but almost like musical notes on a white background. The house is in Newlyn, and it's at the top of the hill. It gets a lot of light. He used to talk of being able to enjoy the sunrise and the sunset just by turning his head. In the course of the show, I went to see him about five times. The pattern of the visit would be to be welcomed, then we'd go into the studio. He has a separate studio from the house, then within the house he has a kind of working studio, where paintings are laid out. And so, when he was making his plans for Contrast in Red Black and White, he had painted lots and lots of paintings, which he had then scanned into the computer, and then he was working with small paper facsimiles, in order to work out the dynamics of the piece. This was a bold move for Frost, then aged 88. In the twilight of his artistic career, he was still searching for new ways to work. I know he'd never worked like that before. That was a new thing really. It was needs must. He was a terribly resourceful person. When he was asked to design multiples for Tate, mobiles, he just set to very practically, to design it in reality, not realising that he could involve a designer.

Photo: Terry Frost, Installation: Contrasts in Red, Black and White, (2002/2003)  © Jon Pratty.

He was very down to earth in that way, he would set to work out how to do something. So in making Contrasts (the major wok in the Tate show) I think he didn't overly rationalise it to himself, he just went away, made his plan, and as that evolved, that's what we would look at as he went along. And he would introduce new elements, and it grew and grew. Maybe from his point of view, he was looking for licence, but as soon as I saw it I was really delighted. When I saw what he was intending I was really excited. I think it's really fresh work - with the vigour of a young artist. It has a dynamic that's totally unexpected, because looking at Contrasts, you find yourself 'within' the experience, and that's not happened before in Terry's work. The viewer comes into the environment, you find yourself going in several directions at once, because you knew there was a lot to look at from different angles. For us, Terry's passing is another marker of something that's going. That period of time. Because Terry was one of the second generation of St. Ives artists, in the Modernist School, so he'd be thought of alongside Bryan Winter, Patrick Heron, Wilhelmina Barns Graham, and Lanyon, I guess. The first generation was Gabo, Nicholson, Hepworth, and so on. Probably John Wells. He's the last but one. There is really only Willy (Barnes-Graham) left, I think, who's reached that level of significance in her professional career.