Sophy was born in Brighton and lives and works in Brixton. She graduated from the Surrey Institute of Art and Design in 1995 and has since then dedicated her time to painting. Although officially a Londoner, Sophy has spent much of her time in South Africa on the Stellenbosch farm of her late uncle, landscape artist Philip Erskine. She now spends her days gleefully immersed in sunlight, oils and turps. “I would eat paint if I could. I’m drawn to it physically.”
Sophy’s concern is with capturing the here and now: fleeting encounters at a morning market, a flick of hair here, a stolen kiss there. There’s a kind of snapshot quality about these figurative images that is the antithesis of stiffness and restraint. Each work is alive with movement and energy, and suffused with light and colour.
Sophy has exhibited her work several times in London as well as in Chicago and Cape Town.
