About
After leaving the Totnes Art and Design Foundation course in 2017 I have since graduated from Falmouth University with a first-class Ba(Hons) degree in Fine Art and in 2020 I returned to the course as an Artist In Residence.
During the last 5 years as a practicing artist, I have not only developed a committed professional practice and exhibited extensively, but I have also participated in a number of significant roles including Tate Collective Producer, Artist Assistant, Exhibition Project Manager, Curator and Assistant Tutor/Mentor and Artist in Residence.
Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colours, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential the artist must train not only his eye but also his soul – Wassily Kandinsky, Artist and Teacher at Bauhaus in Weimar 1923-1925
My innovative approach to working as an Abstract Painter and my in-depth and evolving knowledge of the historical and contemporary contexts of Art and Design, means that I can bring to the students, a breadth and range of options available to them in Core Drawing, Advanced Drawing, Life Drawing, Colour and Painting. By integrating a multidisciplinary practice this will act as a springboard for self-exploration through experimentation, investigation of ideas and refined specialisms where the theoretical and historical debate is synthesised and fundamental to all areas of art and design.
Work
The contemplative and dynamic energy of the work oscillates between chance, control and careful restraint. Membranes of flooded pools of pigment transcend mechanisms of the sensory perception intertwining Nature and the ‘nature of being’. Rather than a direct response to a particular place, the paintings are a depiction of what is seen and what is felt with great emphasis on the phenomenology of being in the landscape.
Working with watered down acrylic mediums, Sophie uses a pouring and soak-stain technique to achieve fluid notions of the coastal landscape bringing to the forefront visual observations and perceptions of colour; a configuration of the world around us. A thoughtful consideration of Hue and Tone allows for the abstract compositions to question the language of colour, in attempt to paint the texture of memory and perception through the manipulation of the optics of colour and light.
By eliminating non-essential forms and features, the exposed compositions amplify meanings of medium and process. They hold on to the essence of form, materiality and alchemy of paint allowing for the subtleties of paint and surface to be acknowledged as entities of their own. Through the painting process and the artist’s gesture, the embodiment of the landscape is released and poured onto canvas using the physical body to enact the perceptual experience to mirror the interchangeable exchange between body, mind and landscape in its constant dynamic flux.