Aided by a meticulous study of anatomy, learnt in actual clinical dissections (for artists) and drawing classes, Sophie constructs armatures in welding metal rods together like lyrical skeletal drawings on which she begins to attach or layer specifically worked pieces of wood cut on a band saw from oak panels.  Using a fluid dynamic in understanding the nature of convex and concave forms she creates a muscular movement akin to the classic Eadweard Muybridge studies that have influenced her, ultimately bringing all the segments together and creating a cohesive kinematical feel of bone, muscle and sinew.  She makes what can be very complex achievements seem effortless with a natural ability that gives a life and character to her work.

Simon Levy
Sculptor and Painter
Resident in England and Mexico

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Read and interview conducted by Caroline Lazar on the subject of Mythology by click below


 

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Sophie Dickens's Adam and Eve is a masterly and extremely moving exercise in balance.  The manner in which she has sculpted two monumental figures, one female, one male, in a scene of entire togetherness, allows her to explore a range of powerful and simultaneous fleeting emotions.  She has created a compelling image of vulnerability and despair, which nonetheless is leavened by Adam's protective tenderness and by Eve's gesture in which shame is blended with an optimistic hint at her future maternity.  The mood shifts as the viewer moves round the piece.  At one moment we are overwhelmed by the weighty sorrow of the event; the next we are struck by the way in which the figures seem to leave the ground, like souls rising to heaven.  This extraordinary combination of lightness and weight works through the composition, but above all through the sculptural surface.  Dickens employs both jutting relief and airy voids to establish the anatomy of her figures and, still more importantly, their sacred and very human predicament.

Luke Syson
Curator of 15th Italian Paintings, National Gallery, London

This graceful, even tender, two-figure group achieves something very unusual in the recent history of religious art by making us feel again the universal and personal meanings of human disaster.  As they walk away, Adam's body inclines in grief but also shields the inconsolable Eve as she clutches at her breasts, beside herself with loss and remorse.  The force of the sculptor's rendering is unsentimental but the beholder feels they should step back again, avoiding to intrude on such an intimate calamity.

Dr Alison Wright
Senior Lecturer, University College, London