Sania Pell

sophie and the tate

November 12, 2011  in handmade goodness, inspiring places

I managed to catch the end of Sophie Smallhorn’s show Notes on colour at Westbourne Studios in Notting Hill recently. I am a huge fan of Sophie’s work and I love her colour use, graphic style and how she experiments with their relationships in her screenprints and 3D artworks. I wake up to one of her images every morning as it sits on a shelf in my bedroom (see my previous post here) and it was a joy to see so many of her prints together. I also saw some of her work earlier this year as part of a collaboration at the Craft Council’s Collect, the international art fair for contemporary objects, at the Saatchi Gallery.

Sophie says:

Notes on colour

Having been involved in a number of long-term projects recently, I wanted to work with a process that would allow me to move through ideas quickly and instinctively. ‘Notes on colour’ started some months ago as two hundred sheets of paper, a basic screen printing set-up and a desire to play. The project has been a fascinating time and for me, an essential back-to-basics way to sketch out thoughts on colour, form and composition without becoming preoccupied by ideas of perfection. Mistakes were made and then made something of, one print informed the next and no single print has taken longer than a day to complete. ‘Notes on colour’ is in a sense a thought process illustrated over one hundred screen prints. Collectively it is a story, a story about colour.

To see more of her work visit Sophie’s website

The day after we went for another big dose of artistic inspiration…

With a young family it’s all about finding a balance at the weekend and doing something we all love, and luckily my children love art. So we made a family trip to Tate Modern on Bankside. A quick walk around the amazing turbine hall and then first stop was the fab Tate shop for some Moleskine note pads and Tate pencils to keep the children occupied, drawing their favourite paintings and sculptures.

A trip to any of the Tates is a wonderful day out, enjoyable and educational and if you are able to visit regularly then the annual membership is brilliant, allowing access to the paying exhibitions too. The current Gerhard Richter exhibition was a fantastic show, enjoyed by us all. One of the other benefits of membership is is the view from the members’ rooms balcony on the 6th floor, I snapped the view across the river in the reflection of the famous glass windows.

We also took a browse around a couple of the permanent collections and my daughter loved the fact that by coincidence her outfit matched one of my favourite paintings there, an abstract from 1914 by Vanessa Bell – one of the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf’s sister.

There’s no doubt we’ll be popping back soon for more artistic inspiration!

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