Sophie Sadler

Expression and processes are a big part of my practice. My art has always been environmental and has had natural aspects towards it; A big passion of mine is growing a garden and catering to my plants therefore I cater the same feelings to my artwork as well.

The process of creating an artwork or a painting I find is just as important as the process of growing plants, you must be attentive and patient. The patience while painting help me sit with my thoughts and it is a sort of therapeutic process therefore my paintings are meant to represent and show this sort of slow, mediative mindset.

My works and processes reflect how similar the process of creating artwork is to provide yourself with the ability to learn how to garden and grow your own food. My work is to create awareness about how to be more environmentally friendly and aware or how much society would thrive from people opting to grow more of their own food. It benefits them through lowered cost of buying food, helps the environment as the transport for food rises emissions growing climate change and the overuse of plastic on vegetables in store.

My work shows that the long processes of painting amount to the same time it takes to grow a garden, and a way for you as a person to practice mindfulness, something which I discovered through my act of painting. Throughout my studies and trying to understand why the process of making was such an important aspect of painting for me I came across Jussi A, Saarinen, their theory about how the process of making is an activity and through that activity emotions emerge through artists. These emotions can only be revealed through that process, and this causes an artist to change and modify their work from what the predetermined it to be.

This is something that resonated with me as an artist as this is something I have experienced with all my work and I’m sure other artists can relate to. This activity of making is parallel to growing food from seed, as there are always new issues that arise and things to change for your harvest to be successful and I see those same similarities in painting. In the time it takes me to make a painting and let it dry, lathered in acrylic paint, layers upon layers I could plant a seed at the start of my process and by the end I would have sapling.

This fascinated me because taking that extra time to plant something before starting a project I leave with more than I started. So that’s why my work is trying to so that it doesn’t matter how you try, plant that seed, paint thick acrylic and wait for it to dry and you’ll have plants in no time. It’s all part of the process.