Sophie Layton | Circular Changes

This artistic maturity mirrors one of a more personal sort. When her show ‘Refracting Light’ was in the Eames Fine Art Gallery in 2019, she was about to get married. Following on from a formative fellowship (and an engagement) in Japan, that landmark show exhibited a tremendous leap in her style. Now at the opening of this 2021 show, Sophie is preparing for another leap: motherhood. Her art is likewise advancing forward to new frontiers. For the last few years, Sophie has been utilising and quoting glass art in her original prints, initially shining light through the glass pieces to construct technicoloured compositions then realised in monoprint. As seen in this show, she has now evolved into composing and designing these glass pieces herself – a new technique that she finds liberating.

In a collaborative process, Sophie drafts a design and instructs glass artists in how she wants the piece to be crafted. When the resulting lustrous shape is ready, she paints onto it with designs and images that come directly or obliquely from her extant prints. These pieces with repurposed prints then have the same ebullience in three dimensions that we have come to know and love in Sophie’s two-dimensional work. Often, the glass piece then becomes an artistic subject itself, and Sophie makes a print depicting the glass work with her original print on it. Here, the circular qualities of inspiration are clear.

We then see these ascending shapes and vibrant hues reappropriated into new, mystifying structures in Sogetsu Arrangement with Roman Pot. Again, those verdant shadows possess a lovely verticality, and the beautiful bright pink buds shine. But now these flowers are contained within a Roman pot. The ancient art of Japanese flower arranging melds surprisingly yet seamlessly with the ancient pot work, which grabbed Sophie’s attention during a recent trip to Pompeii. The stalks of this flower arrangement are now thrown and bent and contorted along the curved surface of an imagined glass piece. The original composition has been given new life.