My work focuses on portraiture, but with the use of painting and photography this genre is skewed and manipulated, and the transformative properties of paint are pushed to the limit. I photograph the act of painting on to my skin and then paint on top of the printed photographs, creating a layering of image of paint and painted image, blurring the boundaries between the two. My ‘self’ is lost, buried beneath the paint and the notion of portraiture is questioned. The body becomes both object and subject within the work.

There is a constant shift between dualities in my work; painting and photography, reality and fiction, and absence and presence. The painting, photographic and layering techniques and vibrant bold colours used within the work become obstacles to reality, distorting and creating absurd and abstracted portraits.

www.sophiederrick.com