Sophie Vallance Cantor, Lonesome in Rat Bohemia, 2024, Oil on canvas, 130 x 130 cm, 51 1/8 x 51 1/8
Sophie Vallance Cantor creates worlds that express the inner workings of her mind by blurring the line between reality and imagination. Her paintings invite viewers to see the world through her eyes: where bright neon signs light up dark alleyways and domestic cats transform into wild beasts in 24-hour bars and cafés. Each painting reads like a still from a film; characters look at the viewer with a sense of cool detachment as they ride motorcycles down infinite highways, smoke cigarettes and drink extravagant cocktails.
Amidst the narrative of her paintings there often lies a sense of stillness. Each small moment is immortalised and savoured through thick, luscious strokes of oil paint that exude a palpable sense of joy and pleasure in the creation process. Vallance Cantor’s figures are depicted with strong, bold shapes and her use of vivid colours invites the viewer to relish in the pleasures of her practice. There is a certain sense of playfulness and mischievous delight that permeates all of Vallance Cantor’s work.
In a broader context, Vallance's art serves as a counterbalance to her experiences as a neurodivergent individual, with her self-portraits constantly evolving and conversing with each other on the canvas. Although viewers are welcomed into her world, they are still kept at arm's length, like outsiders looking in on a private moment.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background as an artist?
This is actually the hardest of all of the five questions, (I’m having to return to it after answering the rest!) possibly because I feel like the act of having a practice as an artist is something that is constantly in movement, and never standing still so almost impossible to describe. But I’ll try and hit some of the points you’re probably asking about. I first started to take the idea of being an artist seriously when I found myself in Berlin in 2016. I married my partner Douglas Cantor, but we didn’t earn enough money for him to qualify for the British marriage visa and stay in the UK, so we moved to Berlin to stay together. For the first time in my artist existence I was removed from all of the opinions, trends and noise of being at university, and for the first time in my human existence I was removed from the structured path I had been on. I owe so much of the mindset shift to Douglas (also a painter) who made me realize if we want people to take us seriously, we have to take ourselves seriously. Since then we’ve lived in Glasgow and are back in London now. Ultimately I think that I’m looking for myself in my work, and the answers to questions that don’t have answers, about what it is to be alive, belonging, fear, loneliness and love.
Can you walk us through your creative process for this piece; from idea conception to completion?
I didn’t start with a clear idea of exactly what I wanted the composition to be for this work (although sometimes I do). It was one of the first works I made after a break and a burnout last year, so I wanted to approach it with some sense of ease if I could. I began by drawing different compositions by trying to follow a feeling of the work I was trying to uncover. I rely on gut feeling a lot as I work, and to turn a drawing into a painting it’s got to feel right. I stretched and primed my canvas then I painted a layer of brown oil paint which I drew into by wiping away the paint to carve the lines. The rest of the process flowed quite smoothly (it definitely doesn’t always work like that!) and I paid special attention to the subtleties in her expression, and the soft blending between the green and orange. It’s nice when work goes smoothly, because sometimes you just need a win, believe me. Again, gut feeling tells me when it's finished - if in doubt turn it to face the wall for a few days and look at it fresh.
I love the colour palette of this piece. I have noticed in your most recent pieces that you are exploring darker, green and orange hues. Is there anything in particular that has inspired this move?
Visually my works are very atmosphere driven and influenced by cinematography. I’ve spoken before about the yearning to be enveloped by the setting of a painting, and why that is closely linked to a lifelong search for belonging. As a kid I was fascinated by films set in American cities because I perceived them to be depicting a ‘real life’ I wasn’t part of but desperately wanted to be- I now know that this was due to being on the spectrum, which is why it hasn’t left me, and in turn has become an important part of my work. The exploration of colour within these cinematic references is something I’m currently delving deeper into, and I think there is so much room for play. Last year I made a painting called ‘Illegal Alien Kiss’ about my partner Douglas’ personal circumstances as an immigrant, our navigation of the immigration system and the impact it has had on our life together. I painted us both in these deep green hues, the orange of the cigarettes bouncing off our faces, and I knew it was something I wanted to return to. I actually like the term alien and its multiple personal meanings, -outsider, immigrant, other- and how that can be played with through colour and more.
The figure in the painting is holding what looks like Sarah Schulman’s novel Rat Bohemia. What does this novel mean to you and your practice and why did you choose to depict it in this composition?
In its simplest form the presence of the book in the composition is a personal reminder to me. I think there is a lot going on in the world right now which has been getting me down, and making me feel hopeless and lost. Sarah Schulman is one of my favourite artists and Rat Bohemia is one of my favourite books. The characters exist on the fringes of New York city in the 1990s, navigating abandonment, grief and poverty. It is a beautiful book in both sorrow, honesty and authenticity, and I wanted to portray the reading of it as a way to form a sense of connection to another artist through their written work. I wanted there to be a tension between lonesomeness and connection in the painting, a moment of pause and reflection and sitting with hard feelings but also a sense of coming back to yourself and what’s important. To quote Sarah herself ‘sometimes a person has to stop talking about art for a moment and take a look around.’
This year, Platform is curated by Gemma Rolls Bentley and is inspired by Charleston, the modernist home of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. At Charleston, Bell and Grant painted every surface in the farmhouse, transforming it into a living, breathing work of art. Could you tell us a little bit about how your studio space affects your creative process?
Back in Berlin I first worked at a home studio out of necessity, and there have been many iterations over the years, and through the process of trying different set ups I came to learn that it is by far my favourite way of working. I don’t need the separation between life and painting because I see it as the same thing. There is an old Turkish rug in the middle of the room which has been in every single studio since our first in Berlin, and is stained with the paint of hundreds of paintings, and trampled with cat hair (the paintings always have at least a couple of stragglers too). I like the sensation of being tucked away from the world to work, because I think that showing up to work, to have the conversation between you and the painting, is a very vulnerable process. One day I hope that my home studio will be a big open space with enough walls to work on ten paintings at once, but for now I’ll settle for the golden afternoon light and proximity to my kitchen for cups of coffee and snacks.
