Embroidered paintings by Sophia Narrett
Embroidered paintings by Sophia Narrett. Talented American artist Sophia Narrett creates amazing paintings where the paint as if flows down the canvas. All the magic of her paintings opens, you only if you get closer – in fact, the pictures of Sofia are not painted but skillfully embroidered. Sophia Narrett started as a painter, focusing on narrative figure painting. Then she realized she wanted a different kind of physical engagement with the materials, and started working in thread. Sofia decided to combine painting and embroidery – and now, instead of brush strokes on the canvas she prefers stitches of different thickness and texture of the yarn, which add volume and layers to her paintings. From a distance, the picture of Sofia looks like oil painting, and this optical illusion gives her paintings a special charm.
“As I continued working in embroidery I became interested in the repercussions that embroidery holds for the image and story, as well as the way that it dictates the process. As the emotionality of the narratives heightens to that of melodrama, the intense investment in the embroidery process required to create legible images speaks to the overwrought nature of the fantasy.”
To portraits and still lifes Sofia prefers plot motifs, they give her more space for creativity. In her paintings people interact with each other, with nature, with the interior – it’s not just static images, this whole story on canvas. Sofia is interested in filling her works with different details that make her embroidered paintings look like masterpieces.