SOPHIE WESTERLIND YOU DANCED ON THE CARPET AND WAITED FOR HER

Text: Pia Sophie Biasi

Sophie Westerlind's paintings offer a profound exploration of the complexities of the human body and its many stages of life. Her work focuses on the recurring themes of the female form, body language, and the ways in which we use movement to express ourselves. Through her art, Westerlind seeks to delve deep into the nuances of how we inhabit our bodies, and how we communicate with others through physicality.

She uses loose, bold, and dynamic brush strokes, which create a sense of movement in her paintings, capturing the intensity of the human experience. The fast way of working, the fluidity and spontaneity in how she uses only one brush mark to create a shape, gives her paintings a sense of immediacy and vitality.

Westerlind’s works are deeply personal. She portrays friends and family members directly from life or from photographs. She imbues each subject with dignity and respect, capturing their unique spirit and tenderness of personality with an unwavering gaze. Her use of colour and light creates depth and texture that draws the viewer in and transmits intimacy between the subject and the audience. As she grapples with the complexities of human relationships, she grants the viewer access to her own emotional world. Her work is as much about the act of painting, as it is about the act of observing and capturing fleeting emotional states of her own, of the sitter and the relation between them.

With a sense of warmth and familiarity, her paintings of interior spaces encapsulate the essence of domesticity, as they tell stories about the people who inhabit those rooms. “Perhaps interiors are the most successful portraits because they reveal so much about the individuals who occupy them, their thoughts, feelings, and unique personalities”, she says.

The work Self-portrait at Cité des Arts in Paris (2022) marks her first self-portrait since Fine Art School. Westerlind examines her identity and own emotional state which requires a level of vulnerability and honesty, as the artist exposes her inner self to the viewer. She initiates a painterly and conceptual conversation that explores the complex duality between the subject and the artist. This dynamic interplay is captured through the tension between self-possession and self-scrutiny, inviting the viewer to reflect on the inherent paradox of artistic expression.

Her flower paintings are suffused with echoes and resonances of passing time, which in turn points to the poignancy and essential melancholy of the medium. Yet, for Westerlind, solace can be found in the consoling beauty of nature and in the flow of time that connects us all.

The exhibition also includes a group of drawings in oil-pastel created during her residency in Paris at Cité Internationale des Arts in collaboration with Konstakademien in 2022. These show details of powerful paintings by great masters such as The Massacre at Chios by Delacroix she had the opportunity to study at the Louvre. Westerlind’s perception and emotional state were greatly affected by the breakout of the Ukrainian war that translated into drawings with a lighter touch, leaving blank spots and using fewer colors. Only when turning to paintings by Rubens, revelling in exaggerated male bodies and satirical elements, her drawings became more vibrant, alive, and powerful. Westerlind’s works depict a constant search for self-expression and reflection through the study of the past and present representation of the human body and the space it inhabits.