Sophia Pauley

Sophia Pauley (b.1994) is a Welsh artist from Cardiff, currently finishing her 2 year Masters at the Royal College of Art. In 2018 she received a First Class degree in painting from Edinburgh College of Art and was the winner of the Artist’ Collecting Society 12 month Studio Residency Award. She has recently had her first solo show in Glasgow as winner of the RSA WASPS award 2022.

Sophia fluidly shifts between painting, drawing and sculptural installation, conveying the intense feelings of nostalgia and emotion attached to attempting to succeed in elite performance sport. The obsessive, repetitive process-led studio production mirrors the immersion of mind and body when training. Sophia’s work comprises an ever-changing material exploration; she intuitively finds ways beyond the traditional modes of painting, resulting in three dimensional wall and floor based works. Her work reflects the parallels and contradictions of the concept of ‘flow’: an analysis of adrenaline, attention and control.

Making is a labour intensive process for me: through control, I feel freedom.

The studio is my own haven of isolation, away from the world in a familiar setting, away from chaos. A place where I let my thoughts drift in the contemplative state known as ‘flow’.

I feel time differently, one perception when I am ‘in flow’ and one when I am not.

This latest series encapsulates the dizzying, addictive feeling of adrenaline which fuels the unique intensely time-consuming processes that make up the aesthetics of these works. There is such satisfaction in labour, of pushing one's body and materials to their limits, I feel I have achieved being in the present, just for a second… until it’s gone.

I am forever chasing this feeling, this feeling of being ‘in flow’, when the body and mind are in perfect synchrony.