Gary Hume makes beautiful paintings. His materials are household paints on aluminium surfaces and his subject's, he says, are "flora, fauna and portraits". The results are elegant, delicate, simple yet elusive and exquisite. Playing gloriously with colour and light, they are paintings of subtle tones, idiosyncratic clashes and insistent reflections. Interviewed in his studio, Gary Hume reflects on his work from the 1980s, when his Doors series won...

Malcolm Morley is one of the most significant and influential painters working today. Born in England but active in the United States since the late 1950s, Morley has developed an intensely individual vision embracing, but never determined by, autobiography, politics, psychoanalysis, myth, the visual culture of his time and the limitless potential of paint. Filmed as Morley works in his distinctive manner on a spectacular new canvas, this documentary...

Lisa Milroy’s paintings are pleasurable and provocative, clear but complex, immediate and yet richly subtle. In 2001 many of her major works were brought together for an important exhibition at Tate Liverpool; this film, the first about her work, was made alongside that show. Her earliest works are depictions of everyday objects: shoes in serried ranks, collections of lightbulbs and household hardware. Later canvases explore the process of depicting...

Three spectacular canvases by Sandra Blow were one of the highlights of the 2006 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Sadly, this was her last show, as she died in August that year. This film was made in her studio in St. Ives as she was preparing to submit her works, and it captures her remarkable character and her fascinating reflections on a lifetime creating beautiful, rigorous, distinctive and joyous paintings. Sandra Blow spent a formative year...

In the early nineteenth century John Constable revolutionised landscape painting and the way in which we see the natural world. Many of his major works are in the collection of Tate, and this film uses those paintings and drawings, together with works from London's National Gallery and elsewhere, to consider the artist's life and work. The canvases and sketches are newly and exceptionally filmed in HDTV from the original artworks. Constable at Tate...

Ian Davenport’s 48 metre-long painting Poured Lines transforms the tunnel beneath a railway bridge in Southwark, close to Tate Modern. The painting’s numerous vitreous enamel panels were created in a German factory where they were baked at fearsomely high temperatures. This film follows the artist as he creates this remarkable public artwork. Like all of Ian Davenport’s work, Poured Lines rigorously explores the qualities and possibilities of...

theEYE is a best-selling series of profiles about contemporary artists. Each film offers a rare insight into an artist's influences and ideas, providing an accessible means of engaging with the pleasures and puzzles of art in the twenty-first century.

"I often feel that trying to make something realistic is the one criteria I can feel fairly sure of. Another one I sometimes use is, would I like to have it in my room? And I occasionally use the idea, if God allowed you to show him one thing to judge you by, would this really be it?" Julian Opie's highly distinctive depictions of the modern world are created in an extraordinary variety of media. His bold portraits, subtle landscapes, unconventional...

Karl Weschke's impressive, complex paintings picture the human figure and the landscape, the everyday and the mythical. His subjects include dogs and drowned bodies, creatures from legends and, increasingly in recent years, the monumental ruins of ancient Egypt. For more than fifty years, he has explored the possibilities of painting and its relevance to an uncertain world. Produced alongside a retrospective at Tate St Ives, with additional paintings...

George Romney (1734-1802) was a key figure in British art in the late eighteenth century. A contemporary of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, he was a fashionable, prolific and at times dazzling portrait painter. Originally from the Lake District, Romney moved to London in 1762, abandoning his wife in the process. After a visit to Italy, he found numerous patrons attracted by his immaculate draughtsmanship and spontaneous style. Along with...