Sophie Vallance
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
Sophie Vallance is a painter based in London. Her paintings include cats, fur coats and lace, along with scenes from her home and studio. In the exhibition “Enemies to Lovers, but Me to Myself” at Miłość in London, some works are shown as room dividers made from canvas panels hinged together.
In our interview, Vallance talks about working in a small London home studio, how the divider format appeared in the show, and how these images enter the paintings. She also speaks about autism, burnout, and the place painting has in her life.
Q: How did painting become a way for you to create a space outside of everyday life?
A: I think that it happened naturally, and without me even noticing. Just through the urge to keep showing up and making things, I began to carve out a space where I could actually be myself in ways I wasn’t able to in other areas of my life. My work has allowed me to get to know myself and create an outlet that is basically just for me.
Q: In “Enemies to Lovers, but Me to Myself” at Miłość in London, your paintings take the form of room dividers. What led you to work in this format?
A: The idea of the room dividers was born from working in my small London home studio alongside my partner Douglas Cantor, who is also a painter. We became used to seeing images stacked upon each other due to a lack of space, and I wanted to play around with the idea of taking agency over that and creating a 3D image that could be moved, to hide or reveal other images in a setting. I wanted them to feel very much still like paintings, so they are canvas panels hinged together, without extra additions like feet or frames. I also love the idea of everyone being able to see the back or sides of a painting.
Q: Ideas of hiding, protection, and boundaries run through the work. How do these come into the paintings?
A: The room dividers also work as these physical boundaries which can be hidden behind, which is something we really considered when curating the works in the gallery space. We wanted to encourage walking behind the dividers, and other paintings feeling hidden by their presence, with the viewer having to discover them by moving through the curation. The other big symbol of protection in the show are the fluffy fur coats. For me, they exist on the border between insulation and isolation, which I think mirrors an experience from my own life with autism and the push and pull of navigating the world.
Q: Your work has shifted from more dynamic scenes to quieter, more still compositions. What changed for you?
A: Again, I think this shift happened quite organically over the past year and a half. Often shifts in my practice happen as a direct reflection of changes in my life, and sometimes I don’t really realise until enough time has passed. I think the quieter scenes are more expressive of acceptance and observation, and sitting with things the way they are instead of trying to alter them or run away from them.
Q: Animals appear throughout the paintings. How do these figures start to take form?
A: The cats have been a recurring, yet ever-changing subject matter in my work for ten years now. They are big cat transformations of my two cats Autumn and Luna, who can be found hanging out in the studio. But they tend to become vessels for bigger feelings or concepts. In this show, they very much take on the symbolism of the autistic meltdown, which for me was the most unbearable part of this period of burnout. I think the snarling, explosive, scary loss of control of the cats is perfectly balanced out by the still and reflective portraits.
Q: You work with elements like fur, lace, and repeated patterns. What draws you to these surfaces?
A: This body of work was my first time painting lace, and it began with the painting “Lace Armour,” which was based off a real piece of vintage lace we have hanging in our kitchen doorway. It felt very much like a symbol of home, and I wanted to create a painting where I could wear the safety and comfort of home physically on my body, despite the fragility of the lace, and because of that the protection it gives is just an illusion of armour. The process of painting the intricate lace patterns, or the patterned fur of the cats, very much also mirrored the process of turning up and working to heal from burnout. It felt laborious and slow, something where I very much had to trust the process in order to continue. I also looked closely at the decorative lace works of Dagobert Peche and how he transformed the craft to create delicate and tender images from lace, and I wanted to pay homage to that. Often in my work symbols, patterns, and characters reoccur and become embedded in the practice. Through repetition they become important visual languages which hold a lot of meaning for me.
Q: Your paintings often show private moments. How do you think about the viewer when you’re creating?
A: I tend not to think about the viewer of my work. My practice is primarily a place where I belong and am accepted first and foremost, and the rest are secondary things that happen afterwards.
Q: Autism and burnout are part of the work, alongside ideas of care and resistance. How do these fit within your practice?
A: I always say that my practice is my antidote to my difficult experiences of living with autism, and a refuge is opened up for me to exist in. Making work was one of my only lifelines during this intense experience of burnout, and as I was nearing the completion of the body of work for “Enemies to Lovers but Me to Myself,” Aleks, who runs Miłość, sent me the essay “Sick Woman Theory” by Johanna Hedva. They say, “When you have a chronic illness, life is reduced to a relentless rationing of energy. … How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” I don’t often find my experiences of disability or my work represented in theoretical writing, so the act of having my very personal work understood and contextualised felt like an important moment between gallerist and artist, and I feel grateful that this show has been in such good hands.
Q: What stayed with you most while working on this exhibition?
A: Working on this body of work through and about autistic burnout has just made me realise that I cannot simply return to how things were before. I need to create a new way of living and being, and I’m sure that my work will continue to show up for me to guide me whatever that looks like.
All images courtesy of Sophie Vallance Cantor and miłość, London
