When I saw Self Portrait with Franny by Sophie Treppendahl I could actually feel the warmth of that moment wash over me and pictured myself in that scene, enjoying a quiet moment with a sweet cat called Franny. That’s the best thing about art, isn’t it? To be transported somewhere when you are staring at something tangible that someone else created.
Sophie is an artist from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and paints in oils. Her subjects and scenes are often drenched in golden light; and she cites Lois Dodd, Josephine Halvorson, and Alex Katz as influences.
Like a scene by Édouard Vuillard, Sophie Treppendahl’s paintings present familiar places to which we have never been. Her interiors are warm and inviting. Comfortable and full of reading, art-making, eating, cooking – life. The placement of Treppendahl’s objects is particular. She composes “in the flatbed,” meaning that she builds her composition with an eye not only to perspectival space, but also to the flatness of the picture plane, with shape, line and color pushing and pulling, moving the viewer’s eye. In Treppendahl’s work, the viewer often sees the passing of time: things that happened; things waiting to happen. The viewer sees the remains of a dinner party, the light moving through a room, opened books a reader has enjoyed. As viewers we follow this same trajectory, moving through Treppendahl’s paintings at our own pace, in our own space, in our own time.
That is an excerpt from Philip Martin Gallery and Sophie’s latest show The Nearness of You.
All paintings by Sophie Treppendahl
I miss your blog so much, it’s one of my favorites. So nice to see a post! Her paintings are so… juicy and delicious.
So glad you’re still here…!