FOUND METAPHORS

“Painting serves as a metaphor for understanding myself – I am in flux. Individual elements, collectively, make up my worldview and the smallest additional element has the potential to shift this. The warm glow of light on an autumn tree can draw me out of my internal obsessions, bringing my attention externally; shifting my focus and bringing reverie to a moment, that seconds before, lacked it.” - 2022

Colour and texture collide in Sophia’s multi-layered reality paintings. Although she doesn’t paint identifiable subjects, the colours and textures are drawn from daily life – from the creases of bedsheets to the textures of granite. By bringing these elements together into a picture plane, Sophia disrupts our ability to filter and categorise, bringing our attention to the messy, information-soaked reality of navigating life.

The display of these works, crawling over the surface of the wall at irregular heights offers an opportunity to find connections and serve as a metaphor for how many, small elements make up a whole. Sophia graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Bachelor of Art History and Curatorship in 2022 from the ANU School of Art and Design. She was awarded the EASS COX Prize for this, her graduating work.