Sonia Srebric

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2019 I took hundreds of photos of Notting Hill Carnival over the three days and am really glad I did, as it was the last Carnival before Covid. So my current studio practice is using my original source to document this event through a series of formal and informal studies, which will lead into a new body of work.

I am interested in the colours, shapes, textiles and history of the costumes, worn by the players but also in the more subliminal subcultural aspect of the event and the pictorial history which reveals itself layer by layer.

So far my paintings have been traditional, figurative portraits and closer to the original images and more formalised in terms of capturing actual key characters, with some variations.

The plan for my future body of work is to take this research further by experimenting with printing some of the images and layering with acetate to create new abstract aspects of the original image to play around with and find the best form of representation.

Not all my experimental work has become resolved because I change my mind, or things don’t go according to plan but I like to be working on several different ideas at the same time, so there are always projects which are in various stages of development and I can move between them, whilst one picture might be drying, I will be preparing a new canvas for something else.

There is so much scope to take projects in new directions in the future.  I had some ideas to do some sculptural and video work to link it all together but without studio access, this could be difficult, so I may have to come up with something simple or think of different ways of achieving the same results.