Her work is characterized by graphic abstraction, an embrace of color and difference in scale, and an array of techniques used to apply paint and other materials to canvas, ranging from cloths and rugs, to masking with tape, squeegee-ing and smearing, and collaging.
She has also worked in film and video, most notably for her 2005 exhibition Her Black Flags at the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, CA, and in sculpture and installation.
Artforum critic Naomi Fry, reviewing a 2007 show at Edward Thorp Gallery, cited the artist's interest in landscape as subject and noted that Sandström "also grapples here with painting’s essential difficulty in the face of the sublime.
She earned a bachelor's degree in fine art from Academie Minerva in the Netherlands in 1997 and spent a year studying at The Cooper Union in New York City on an exchange program.
Sigrid Sandström is a Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts / Uniarts, Helsinki and has previously held teaching positions at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Bard College,NY; MassArt, Boston, MA Sandström is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship[2] and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.