Sophie Crichton

ABSTRACT New Big Orange White Blue Canadian Contemporary Artist Sophie Crichton

2024

Sophie Crichton is an abstract painter from Toronto (b. 1993), currently living and working in Barcelona. Sophie was exposed to art and design from the beginning; growing up with two creative parents, she began to develop her eye and form her artistic sensibility. She would later go on to study art at Sheridan College of Applied Arts and Technology as well as design at Ontario College of Art and Design University. Very quickly she discovered that she desired a more tactile and visceral experience of the arts - moving on to explore painting. Sophie continued studying art but it was when she moved to Barcelona her painting practice began to expand on a deeper level. Sophie has works in private collections around the world including the United Kingdom, Europe, South America, The United States, Canada and Dubai. Sophie has exhibited in several group shows and has had two solo shows as well as a collaboration with Adidas. Working with mixed media, Crichton creates expansive abstracted canvases that incorporate the residue of everyday life into shifting scenes. Embracing the line between accident and intent, she approaches her work with an intuitive raw energy characterised by expressive mark making, graphic line work and bold colours. Her works adopt an offbeat aesthetic through the use of both frenetic and refined mark making. She takes inspiration from seemingly banal encounters, the everyday unrest of her urban environment, and liminal spaces - where the transient nature of things leave their mark, creating a patina of debris and stimuli. Crichton is interested in what happens in the margins of everyday life. Wandering through cities, she searches for moments and memories, experiences and stories which she later relays into her abstract canvases, forming the bedrock of her paintings.