BIOGRAPHY
I am practising artist, and a teacher of Art & Photography in Secondary Education.
My work is inspired by the landscape; I use it to trigger ideas, forms and structures. My paintings are not direct representations but an attempt to represent the feeling of being there, movement, the elements, textures and colours.​
My relationship with the landscape perhaps stems from growing up in Cheshire, family walks were a common occurrence. As a young art student I would retrace some of my favourite walks on my own, observing and trying to discover what interested me and how to portray it. I did my degree at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Art, much of the work I developed was from a huge number of drawings I made whilst walking the Sandstone Trail. ​Following my degree I became a secondary school Art teacher.​
My painting renaissance developed from sketches/studies that I produced on family holidays in Cornwall. Becoming interested in the relationship between water and the land, finding the dramatic nature of the sea and the continually changing beach surface exciting. ​
As the sea is quite a long way from Cheshire I have focused more on my local landscape again, especially the Sandstone Trail. I use a mixture of 'plain air ' sketches and photographs to help me compose and try different viewpoints. Mark making, textures, layers and colour are still my preoccupation. I often use a square format so that I can focus on the textures in the foreground. .​Photography allows me to record all year round the seasonal changes and work within my time constraints of teaching. It has always been an important part of my process in developing ideas to work with a variety of media and techniques, such as printmaking, collage watercolour, inks. for me this time spent investigating is vital for creating successful paintings.​
An addition of a dog to our family has allowed me to appreciate the subtle changes of the my environment day to day. In particular the hedgerows and how they change through the seasons. One of the pleasures of Lockdown was witnessing spring arrive, then summer, seeing the changes day to day. You can follow the journey of my developing work on my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/sophieparrlandscapes/
​1989 - Art Foundation at West Cheshire College of Art & Design
1989 - 1992 - BA (Hons) Fine Art - Cheltenham & and Gloucester College of Art
1992 -1993 - PGCE in Art - Liverpool John Moores University
1993 - present day - Head of Art and Photography (Secondary)
2018 - 2023 - Member of the Arts committee at Castle Park Arts Centre, Frodsham
​2022 - curated and hung Inspire 22 Exhibition at St Boniface Church Bunbury