Portraits of Personality by Sophia Burnell

Capturing the true likeness and identity of the sitter is a constant challenge and is the central aim of Sophia Burnell’s paintings. By bringing together the gesture, composition, colour harmonies and edges, she attempts to portray each sitter’s individual personality.

Inspired by portrait painters such as Sargent for his expressive use of paint and handling of temperatures, and Rembrandt due to his evocative use of chiaroscuro, she attempts to bring aspects of the great masters into her own work. Working largely from life Sophia is able to respond directly to the sitter, each sitting creating a closer likeness and sense of the sitters true personality and emotions. Recent work has included painting landscapes en plein air, which comes with equally exciting challenges of capturing the light on the landscape, adapting warm and cool tones and experimenting with different edges.

Sophia aims to modernise a traditional figurative style, arguing that there is a place within today’s art world for painting what you see.