Sofia Fereday

• Course: BA (Hons) Fine Art
• Email: sofiafereday@hotmail.co.uk

Title of Piece: ‘Joan’ – A Graphite Pencil Drawing, 5.8m by 1.7m

Statement:

Most important to my work is having a strong narrative and my final venture envelops the themes of age and degeneration with the genre of portraiture. I have always been fascinated with portraiture, but my recent work explores how a person’s belongings and environment describe the person more realistically than their visual portrait.

Even though the catalogue shows a small detail from my final piece, the actual work is 5.8m by 1.7m and shows a guided tour of all the rooms but one in Joan’s (my Grandmother) house. The panoramic view moves from one room to the next, showing all the clutter and paraphernalia which accurately describe the deterioration of Joan’s life since her life-long partner passed away. None of this work was staged and the out of place objects show her habits and foibles and personality traits truthfully without actually seeing her face. 

Had COVID-19 not occurred, a further piece of the same dimensions would have been completed, showing the final room in my Grandmother’s house where she herself posed in scenarios which she considered to be both true to reality and artistic. This final room has none of the scattered belongings like the rest of the house and ironically my Grandmother believes this is more true to actuality than the rest of the house.

I am excited about my future ideas which involves both absent portraiture and the paraphernalia gathered by decades of life. My future work intends to present a collection of portraits interspersed with an assembly of items and allow the viewer to guess the connection between them similar to an artistic ‘Mix and Match’ game.