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Sophie Thervil
My paintings capture fleeting and overlooked moments that I suspend through highly realistic oil paintings. Relying on my own visual perception and moral judgments, each painting becomes a projection of someone else. My portraits of strangers and friends become a reflection of myself, society’s expectations, and the cultural codes of the city in which I live, Boston.
My practice starts with photographing people I encounter around the city. I notice when I am quick to make judgments about someone’s appearance. Keys falling out of jeans, a jacket buttoned to the collar, or stains from morning coffee on a dress shirt leap out at me. With more recent work, I play with the idea of dress-up. Every day, each person chooses clothing and accessories from their own closet to create an impression. I do the same as an artist, questioning how earnest I should be. Through exaggerated scale, the viewer is allowed to fully enter each painting, taking note of small yet important details. With thin layers of carefully and sensitively applied oil paint, I think about painting objects as they feel to the touch: the coldness of a metal belt, the slippery quality of satin, the specific sheen of a puffer jacket.
Throughout my work, I explore how my perception of clothing, objects, and personal style reveals my own biases of who strangers and friends are. These paintings become vulnerable in my honest judgments of class, race, and assumptions. As a mixed race, yet white passing, woman, I find myself questioning how brief moments can sway someone’s perception of another’s identity. The changes in our day-to-day appearance tell a larger narrative of who we are or who we could be. As you look down at your fingernails that hold last night’s paint, socks that don’t match, the necklaces that slowly become tarnished, what story are you telling about who you are?
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 78 × 38 in.
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 78 × 38 in.
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 18 × 24 in.
Oil, acrylic, acrylic paste on canvas, 26 × 16 in.
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 78 × 38 in.