Sophie DeFrancesca

Sophie DeFrancesca is a Canadian artist who works primarily figuratively through visual intuition. Her sculptural series began as a personal response to the loss of her mother in early childhood. As a way of keeping a connection to her, she recreated garments for her dolls inspired by pictures she had of her mom wearing beautiful dresses in the 40’s and 50’s. 

Later, as a mature artist, this theme came up again, but rather than approaching the work through fixed concepts, meaning has emerged over time through the act of making itself. After 25+ years of dedicated practice, sculpting with wire mesh and exploring various materials that work responsively with light, translucency, and ornament, these sculptures have gradually accumulated psychological and symbolic associations over time.

Recurring themes of absent figures, reflective ornament, and shifting light became a language through which themes of longing, memory and psychological space could be explored. In her practice, material behavior is conceptual content. Refracted light and shadows reinforce themes of presence/absence and the fragility of life. Seductive surfaces create tension around notions of glamour and femininity, how they are constructed, performed, desired, and internalized.

In addition, animal forms extend these ideas into the realm of instinct, archetype and display. Simultaneously alluring and uncanny, these forms examine the emotional complexity of attraction, reverence, projection and possession.

Across all strands of DeFrancesca’s work, empty space, light and shadow function as physical and psychological material. Reflections and refracted colour create unstable perceptual experiences, in which forms appear to expand and contract or transform, depending on their environment. 

Through these shifting states, the work reflects on how human connection continues to shape us both physically and psychologically.  DeFrancesca’s work is revelatory.  It addresses identity, whether personal, cultural or symbolic, as continually constructed through memory, mediated images and perception, thus becoming an emotional residue that is suspended in space all around us.