Spotlight: Sophia Isabella Brown, Screen Printing and Embroidery Artist

Sophia Isabella Brown grew up in a creative home. She paints, illustrates, and embroiders her designs while exploring shapes and patterns looking for places to add a face.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?

Ending up on an artist’s path was sort of inevitable. I grew up in a creative household where art was a form of play, and it just became ingrained in my everyday life.

I did begin to stray from an artist’s path when I studied physical science full-time for five years – a decision I don’t regret, but it did come from a certain belief I had at the time that studying art, or doing art as a means to make a livelihood, was somehow less worthwhile. It meant putting aside a lot of my creative work, and it took some time to find my way back to a committed practice. 

When was the first time that you remember realizing that you are a creative person?

Likely already in kindergarten, where I was immensely shy and overwhelmed by pretty much anything besides creative projects. I remember, vividly, every art project I ever worked on in kindergarten and in school. Creating felt like an easy way to express myself and interact with others in a non-direct way.

What different creative media do you use in your work?

Roughly summarised: oil paint on paper and canvas, hand embroidery on canvas, and screen printing on paper and textiles. Including printing on canvas bags. Until now I didn’t realise how much canvas plays a role in my work!

A committed drawing practice underlies everything I do creatively. I draw traditionally with (coloured) pencils, brush pens, and occasionally add gouache paint. All of my embroidery and screen printing designs are planned digitally with a drawing tablet. 

Where do you find your inspiration for your designs?

For painting, I’m currently mainly focused on learning techniques, so I just paint whatever I feel like painting. I seek out reference photos that I like, or take my own photos of things that interest me, like strange shiny objects at vintage stores, or animals that I encounter outside. 

With embroidery, the process is a bit more intensive. I make simple linework pieces where I put human faces in silly places. To find where faces could ‘fit’ within an object, I simplify things down to their basic geometry, looking at negative space, searching in particular for round shapes that could accommodate a face.

I’ve spent a great deal of time doing simple drawings of things, or studying simple drawings that others have done – like icons, logos, emojis, clip art, colouring-in books, food packaging, street signs…the list goes on.

I’ll know I’ve landed on something when I laugh out loud while drawing it. 

How do you make time for creating? Do you try to create daily?

Currently, I don’t have a daily creative practice, but certainly a weekly one. I commit to a couple hours a week of oil painting and life drawing, which is a huge privilege and joy to be able to do.

I’ve only recently realised it helps me to create during the exact same time windows each week and to take these as seriously as I would any other appointments. Previously, I just used to hope and pray each day that I’d find some spare time to create, and I ended up constantly prioritising other activities over art, and fretting about it constantly. 

Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?

I sort of hover somewhere in between. I’m not one to do a detailed drawing (or any drawing) before I paint, even though I know the benefit of doing sketches and value studies prior to starting.

I just get too impatient and aim for a ‘lightning in a bottle’ scenario, where good intentions and the right headspace can somehow just make a piece work out in the end, but it doesn’t always go this way!

At the same time, I don’t often create in an exploratory way – I rarely do process art, for example. It’s something I want to try out more, especially with textiles. 

An example to sum up how my process goes: I wanted to paper mache an apple costume, essentially a giant apple that would go over my head sort of like a big astronaut helmet, with my face poking out of a hole. I planned nothing at all – not even the dimensions of the thing – I literally just drew a small picture of an apple, and a round smiley in the middle, and thought ‘yeah…yeah it’ll work’. It actually did, but not after having to make strange adjustments on the fly, which definitely could have been avoided with some better planning! I still haven’t solved the problem of not being able to hear while wearing it. 

Working across many different media, how do you organize all of your creative supplies?

Organised chaos is a good term for it. An attempt at organisation.

My urge to organise is constantly battling against my very messy creative process, and my limited storage space. I do my best. I do often wonder what I’d do with all the spare space I might have if I wasn’t an artist. 

Do you use a sketchbook or journal? How does that help your work develop?

Oh yes. Four years ago I accidentally bought a sketchbook and decided to set myself a challenge to fill the book within a year. I did, and I’ve continued the tradition since then. It’s a great way to track my artistic evolution. The sketchbooks include things like drawings, stickers, collages of train/concert/museum tickets, and photos of commissions done during the year. 

I have a couple of vague rules for the books. Each book starts with a list of my creative goals for the year (and a shopping list for the supplies needed!). I also aim to do a self-portrait in each, and a page of ‘synchronicities’ – visual motifs that keep popping up during the year and somehow feel significant. 

When you travel, do you create while on planes and in waiting areas? What is in your creative travel kit?

I’m usually too full of nerves when in waiting areas (almost missed planes too many times) but I definitely create on planes! It’s a good time to get some embroidery done, if you can find an alternative to taking scissors on a plane (I use a stitch ripper). I’ll pack embroidery stuff into a laptop sleeve to keep it flat and protected. I also usually have my tablet with me to do some digital drawing.

How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?

I start new paintings almost on a weekly basis and every single one gets stuck at a state of being 90% finished.

With embroidery, I only ever work on one embroidery at a time, and usually won’t start one until the previous is finished. 

With drawing, especially commission work, I’m often working on several things at once. It’s nice to be able to flip between drawing projects when I start to lose focus. 

Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?

For embroideries, the process is the same for each piece. 

I start with a main motif. This often appears to me quite randomly. I’ll just notice I’m becoming increasingly interested in a certain object or animal or symbol and then I’ll know that there’s a potential idea there. 

I research associations with the symbol, play around with geometry, and look for ‘face spaces’. I recently finished an embroidered zodiac series where I delved into each of the zodiac signs and their various symbols. Then I gather visual references and brainstorm ideas, waiting for something to ‘click’, and when I’ve landed on the idea I’ll just draw and redraw versions of it until I’m satisfied. 

Then I simply print out the digital drawings, wait for a sunny day, tape them to a window, and trace them onto fabric to be stitched. 

Sometimes there’s a post-embroidery process: I print the same embroidery plans on transparency and expose them onto screens, and print them all out as screen prints. 

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

I absolutely adore brainstorming and coming up with ideas, and just slipping into some spaced-out, playful state of curiosity. I could spend all day in this state but it makes the essential everyday tasks very hard! 

The biggest challenge for me is the point right after this where I have to finalise and commit to a design, but it’s a welcome challenge. 

Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?

Nature and…silliness.

How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?

Painting and drawing have always been my fundamentals. Drawing was something fun and goofy that I did with other people, like my sisters, and as a way of trying to impress everyone at parties or to distract classmates during lessons. 

Painting always felt a little more academic and was something I took very, very seriously at school. My paintings were quite tight and constrained. I then unfortunately hit a painting block and couldn’t bring myself to paint again for a full ten years. 

During those years I continued to draw occasionally, and picked up embroidery and screen printing, mostly creating simple black linework pieces that seemed to resonate well with people. I had a bit of an aversion to colour, only making the occasional colourful embroidery piece, and I think this was somehow connected to my painting block. 

The painting block ended when I was gifted some paints and felt so guilty about them being left unused that I just…started again. And maybe it was all those years of doing different types of creative work, or of having just grown older and learned how to see the world differently, that I could then paint in a wholly new way. I can paint more loosely and expressively in the way that I’d always dreamed of being able to do. And that seems to be bleeding into my drawing style too. 

What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work? 

Working with different media is really helpful for staying motivated. There’s always something new to try out and it’s fun to choose from a range of techniques to convey an idea. I’m also fortunate and grateful to currently have few barriers to creating – I have time, and physical health/safety, for example. 

I also try to track my learning and progress as I go. After a particularly successful, or frustrating, or intense project, I’ll jot down what I feel like I learned from it, and quietly revise what I will take with me into my next projects, which keeps me moving forward. 

What is on your “someday” creative wish list? 

At the top of the list is owning a field easel and just packing all my painting gear and hopping on my bicycle and riding off to some meadows and painting them. 

As someone who generally works fast, I would also like to try committing to a more intensive piece. Maybe an embroidery project that takes a long amount of time, or is used to mark the passing of time.  Like stitching a bullion rose for every day that I’m away from a loved one. Or slowly working on a frighteningly detailed monster during my morning train commutes. 

Where can people see your work?

The best place to see all of my embroideries and screen prints is on my main Instagram account: 
https://www. instagram.com/tsofiah

In the near future I’ll create another account where I’ll share my painting progress. 

Interview with Sophia Isabella Brown posted October 2024