Sophie graduated in 2011 with a BFA in painting from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She creates art that is concerned with the tension of the urban and rural. Mostly working through a reductive process of stencilling, usually from black and white historic photos. Of her unusual artwork, she writes, "My work is primarily concerned with the stripping back of an image. Through the stencil process I search for the point where an image forms and dissolves. My work consists of two parts, the painting and the stencil. The stencils are residues of my painting process, which hold traces of the hand on the outskirts of a preconceived structure of voids. The editing process of the stencil reduces the image down to what is essential leaving a confetti of geometrics."
Both an artist and a shepherd: In addition to creating artwork that's acclaimed in both New Zealand and Australia, Sophie works as a shepherd on high country sheep and beef farms in the remarkably beautiful South Island of New Zealand
Parallels between hometown and the Comstock: She grew up on a high country station in the south of New Zealand bordering Lake Wakitipu in the Queenstown/Kingston region. Kingston, which was a main access way for the gold in the New Zealand gold rush, is now a sleepy village at the bottom of Lake Wakatipu, never to regain the population of the gold mining days. These parallels between her hometown and similar settlements on the Comstock attracted Sophie to the area and it's unique history.
Sophie Scott Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand
