Painting is not something that I was born with and pursued. I was not constantly drawing or coloring. I was inventing stories in my head. I was creating a safe place inside where I could retreat to.
I can not tell you what they were, for they were so many. And I don’t remember them. I just remember the feeling. A felt sense of an entire internal world. I connected with the trees, with the grass, with the animals, with my toys, with the story inside my books…

The growing up phase challenges these connections. The main one challenged was my authentic self. There was such a deep need to belong.
At times the conflict with my own internal world was too much. So I made changes. They looked like big life changes. But they remained on the surface. I felt like an observer of the world, not a part of it. I had disconnected from myself. From my emotions. To avoid painful feelings I had numb all of them. I was fonctioning very well though. I was a functionning process.

Life had thrown ropes I could have hanged onto to get out of this numbness. Out of this functioning process. I did not listen. Though I thought I did. I was just not understanding the message I guess. Maybe too difficult to get out of this somehow comfort zone by its familiarity. So she threw bigger events to shock me out of that state. It became more and more difficult to pretend. I was sliding on the surface of my life, not really living it.
So I started my real work. And connecting back with my emotions and myself was my starting point.

That work means taking the time to observe in real honnesty and face things I don’t really want to face. That journey is paved with a lot of “good reasons” I can not. It is never the right time it seems.
So I tried to prioritize that time.

The work comes from a constant reflection on what it means to be human.

My deepest desire is to connect to my work.
My deepest wish is for my work to connect me to people.
My deepest hope is for my work to help people connect to themselves.

I believe one can only truly and authentically connect to someone else once one truly and authentically connect to oneself.

So my commitment to you, and my art, is to keep doing the work towards, and from, my most authentic self.

Sophie.