Horse (Drawn)
Works by Sophy Brown
April 4th – May 4th, 2024
Locals Only, Caruso Lounge (West Entrance)
Someone somewhere is probably doodling a horse in the margin of a notebook, as people have been drawing horses from as far back as we can see. There are prehistoric engravings on pebbles and sketches on terracotta made in the Egyptian New Kingdom period, 1567-1329 BC. I do it because I have been painting and studying them for over 20 years. Horses are instinctive in a physical way, they’re perceptive and they stand firmly in nature whilst living in our constructed human world. If we look, they will tell us about ourselves. They speak to us not only on an intellectual level through our shared history but a visceral immediate one that reminds us of our own animal skin.
All drawings are codes. The drawings here are plans for paintings, explorations for expressive possibilities or subject nuance and varied in approach. They’re monochrome notations on paper.
About the Artist
Painting for me is a way of responding to the world as I experience it. It is an attempt to give form to my inner life, materialize thoughts, questions and emotions and a way to find meaning.
Over the years my paintings have gone through many changes. They have gone from hard lined color field paintings, to figurative with a range of subject matter and content. I have had a lifelong fascination with horses and their expressive abilities, but in recent years my themes have broadened to include those of loss, remembrance and grief, things I can only hope to deal with on human terms.
Painting has led me to all kinds of materials from spray paint to the ancient silverpoint. I have painted murals and for the theatre. The form and content changes over the years, even how one sees changes. But a life spent making paintings leaves a record of sorts, unique to the maker, a story told in metaphors plucked from the visual world. The language there is rich and infinite.
Sophy Brown received an MFA in painting having completed a BFA at Goldsmiths College of London University. Her work has been represented in galleries and shows in Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and Oklahoma.