I see around your edges

Sophie Witter

Acrylic on canvas 

76  x 76 cm

2026

As a fellow Tasmanian, I’ve always loved Sophie Witter’s work for its playful energy and beautiful bursts of colour. Her paintings feel intuitive and personal, built through layers of mark making and a really natural relationship with paint. There’s a quietness to her work that draws you in, while her titles add another relatable, everyday touch. Fresh, expressive, and full of feeling — her work is such a joy to spend time with.

About the work

This still life features a collection of my pots and vases, with plants and flowers I have picked from around my studio. These objects appear in many of my works creating a sense of place and familiarity. I have used colour and loose and expressive lines to capture the movement of the flowers and the spaces in between them. I use colour as a starting point in my works and then paint intuitively from there. The works draw attention to the process of painting and that it is human, expressive, and imperfect. I am interested in creating a sense of immediacy and intimacy, inviting the viewer to connect with the work and the moment the paint was applied. The titles of the works reflect what I was contemplating at the time of painting and anchor the works in the everyday tensions of day-to-day life. I am interested in challenging ideas that engaging with and making art needs to be an elite and discrete pursuit and highlight that it can be part of our subjectivity and sit amongst our ordinary and complex lives.