Sophie Williams

I am a portrait painter and designer based in Cambridge. My work spans direct portraiture and the quieter, unposed and ordinary moments of everyday life. I take commissions alongside making work of my own, and the two inform each other.

I begin each painting by sketching out shapes, establishing structure and proportion before thinking about paint and colour. From there the process becomes more intuitive, working into the paint directly and interpreting form, colour and edge in response to the entire image as it builds. What I’m most interested in is the tension between figuration and abstraction, and how far brush marks and colour can be pushed before the likeness starts to disappear. I want the work to hold both something true about the subject, and something worth looking at as a painting in itself.

I hold a BA in Fine Art Sculpture from Winchester School of Art and regularly undertake intensive courses and workshops with leading painters in the UK and Europe.

My portraiture has been selected for the Royal Portrait Society Annual Exhibition in 2023 and 2026.