Bubblegum Land With Plastic Chair

At first glance, Sophie Rice's (2023 Aberystwyth University graduate and New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize nominee) paintings in oil and mixed media are pretty. Their saccharine tones are well matched, with light, airy pinks and buttery yellows, hazy blues and soft purples, blending delicately together in deft, assured brushstrokes. But on closer inspection, something is awry. What are objects like a skip and a plastic chair doing in these pleasantly-coloured dreamscapes? What could the waiting room depicted in 'Waiting Room' possibly be for, and where does the stairway lead in 'Fruit Salad', ending abruptly as it does in a portal-like oval suggesting a stage set or alien spacecraft? It is in these incongruous details that Sophie's paintings are rendered suddenly uncertain, as our enjoyment of their silky colours is disturbed. Describing these scenes as 'uncanny environments', Sophie adds another layer of removal in her use of old photographs and drawings for references, her subjects lifted out of another life, another layer of representation. In her paintings, we find ourselves in unstable, floating dreamscapes, where nothing is quite as it seems.

Charlotte Brisland, Lecturer in Fine Art (Painting) at the University of Aberystwyth and New Blood Masters Artist:

'Sophie’s approach in painting has always been experimental. Applying feminist theory with colour and creating unsettling spaces in her compositions, the paintings are both personal and relevant within a wider social context. The paintings are built up in fragmented parts of visited places and are often turned upside down or on their side during the making process.'