Sophie Derrick
With brush, photograph, and flesh, Sophie Derrick distils the self into gesture—silent, precise, and blooming across the skin.”
Exploiting the transformative and alchemic properties of painting, photography and sculpture. Derrick pushes out the ‘self’ resulting in a ‘self-less’ state. Through her practice, Derrick blanks out and departs from herself, transcending the artist, the woman, becoming ‘agender’ with the single motive of demonstrating the possibility of reaching a place where we too can be ‘other’.
Using her skin as the canvas, impasto paint is placed sculpturally onto her face, before being rendered flat through digital photography, the image is then re-animated, by thick lashings of paint being applied heavily across the mounted surface.
Derrick’s practice is founded on self-portraiture, but her blending of sculptural painting and performative photography, successfully transcends any traditional interpretation.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
open studio, Wilkshire, UK 2021 | The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, UK 2021 | Infinity Rooms, London, UK 2020 | Affordable Art Fair, Online 2020 | Pulse Art Fair Miami, USA
EDUCATION:
MA Fine Art Wimbledon College of Art, London 2012 | BA (Hons) Fine Art, Leeds University 2008
AWARDS:
Arlo & Jacob Collaboration | Burnt Orange Collaboration | Deborah Lyons, Fashion Collabration
Sophie Derrick lives and works in London.
“Yes, so I paint directly onto myself- my face and body- and take hundreds of photographs throughout the process, layering more paint as I go. Then I choose a selection of those images, print them as acrylic prints, and paint them over again. It's a multi-layered approach: paint on skin, photograph, print, and paint again. The result becomes kind of a mask- a transformation of myself into "other"”
Interview:
