Art

Sophia Anthony

B.F.A. with a focus in Painting

Open gallery

Licence My Roving Hands, 2018, oil on panel, 48x48
"Licence My Roving Hands," 2018, oil on panel, 48”x48”

Garden of the Laws is comprised of paintings in two forms: a series of paintings from booking photographs titled Lineup and a series of fractal patterns based on wrinkles in human skin. In parallel, these series explore the juxtaposition between the psyche and the corporeality of the figure, conceptualizing the seam between mind and body.

Drawing upon historical references, the series of portraits examine the practice and connotations of photographic mugshots, transforming these images into painstakingly realistic paintings. Despite a presumption of innocence, a booking photograph can seemingly indict the subject in the eyes of the viewer. To minimize the supposition of guilt, I attach the history and weight of 19th century honorific, aristocratic portraiture to the subjects. Re-contextualizing these images through the process of painting substitutes a sense of dignity, challenging the typical reaction to a mugshot in order to provoke a meaningful dialogue around internment and the justice system.

In the larger, more abstract paintings, I developed a system of using fractal mathematical modeling to simulate the formation of wrinkles. Using these patterns, like those on the palm of our hands, I work not through observation, but through iterations of the non-Euclidean geometric system that, mathematically, would continue on in an infinite number of progressions. Meditative, compulsive, and obsessive, these paintings serve as a reflection on universality and microcosm-macrocosm relationships, revealing the omnipresence of fractal patterns and designs.

Despite their different forms and appearances, both bodies of work explore the human figure and its connotations, evoking ideas about the relationship between body and line.