Biography for Sophie Crockett (1969)

In Sophie's words:-

'I had a childhood in Suffolk that seems a million miles away now. Stealing conkers from the churchyard. The first kitten from the farm cat’s nest, oak tree kingdoms climbed from verges covered in cowslips, the watering pond for carthorses, harvest festivals;blacksmiths with forges, fishing boats on the beaches and the burning of stubble on 10 acre farms.

The blessings of a world before instant entertainment. Fairy tales read, an obsession with horses, cycling barefoot, paraffin stoves in the bathroom, grabbingat eels in streams, magic and tradition. Legend and storytelling. Horses, horses, horses. All this.

My paintings are an attempt to articulate that story about my inner world, which is my intellectual response to thinking about something that becomes a farmore practical exercise in the studio, but nevertheless it's my world, a world of human myth, graspable forms, colour and nature. I'm trying to understand it all, the beauty and the conflicts. It's my attempt at a visual metaphor, part loss, part dream where

I reach back into a past to try and grab a few seeds to scatter like symbols over the encroaching concrete and fences we're all squeezed behind. It's not lost on me that it's an imagined myth, but it's also a myth built from my own experiences and fascinations.
And I'm not scared of looking for beauty. ’