BB: Your work transforms familiar objects into something emotionally different. What interests you about changing the language of objects people already feel a familiarity with?
LS: I have always been drawn to artwork that uses found objects and familiar spaces, turning them upside-down and re-imagining them. Familiar objects create an access point, forming a bridge between the work and the viewer where they can find their own associations and memories. I feel this can help open up the work to an audience beyond the critical discourse of contemporary art.
One of the exciting things, but also perhaps a challenge with found objects, is they hold past lives; trace memories of those who have used them before. Conversely, when we think of paintings, they are new, imagined portals into another world, or windows into a memory.
Through creating canvases that are replicas of these found objects, I am trying to create this middle ground where there is something familiar and tangible to relate to, yet the work still begins with a clean slate to impart memory onto and draw out an implied presence without the entanglement of the object’s own lived history.
BB: Your work seems to embrace softness, both materially and emotionally. Can softness be as disruptive as confrontation?
LS: I’ve always felt it is perhaps harder to show the softer sides of ourselves, especially outwardly. When I was younger, I often felt this need to shield those parts, and put on an extroverted “armour”. Perhaps this reflects back inward - that we struggle to hold space and be graceful to the parts of ourselves that are hurting, healing or needing support. A great deal of my work comes from somewhere personal, and so in a way is grappling with these softer parts of myself.
I think softness can definitely be as disruptive. In a way, it can sometimes feel more uneasy at first, because there’s not something confronting you directly. You have a less immediate or tangible feeling, whether positive or negative, to hold onto. Instead, it forces you to take more space and time with the work, and open yourself up to it. I think when work is expressing difficult emotions or stories, softness can provide a sense of safety, helping coax the viewer deeper into the work, to then open up its complexities.
BB: Has moving between painting and sculpture changed how you approach creating?
LS: Currently, the main thread that runs through all my work is its direct reference back to painting and the anatomy of the stretcher. Everything is oil on linen; however, I approach the development of new works from a more sculptural angle. Much of my research and inspiration comes from furniture, sculpture and installation, thinking about how the works sit in space with one another and the viewer. More recently, I am becoming increasingly interested in considering how painting can push toward installation, and the idea of world-building within a show; Perhaps between exhibitions too.
When it comes to starting a new work, there is this tug of war between object and idea. Occasionally the intention or image comes first, but often there is something about a specific form that inspires me. From here, the big question is how it can be formed as a canvas, which leads to developing new ways to handle, stretch and manipulate linen. This starting point inverts the painterly approach to making, as the image or marks come later and are generally dictated by the form and its context.
BB: You’ve said you like to leave space for the viewer to attach their own meaning, and your work needs their presence to really exist. Do you think artwork belongs sometimes equally to the artist and the viewer?
LS: I think in some sense the artwork might belong more to the viewer than the artist once it leaves the studio. Perhaps this is the most exciting and scary part. When you’re in the studio, you have complete creative control. You decide where the work is going, what you feel it’s about, how the narrative, form, and imagery are all driven. But once it leaves, you have to let go of that sole agency.
Of course it still holds with it everything you put in, but it also has the potential to morph and change its interpretations. You give over the work to the audience, and whatever they may feel or find in the work becomes a part of it.
Some of the most exciting readings and ideas in my work happen when it leaves the studio, and others find their own meaning. It becomes this exchange with the viewer, where the work comes back to you with a deeper level of narrative and nuance that you’re perhaps too close to find. On
top of this, the changing contexts a work is shown in between different exhibitions, and with different artists, also adds new layers of meaning. I guess this is really why I make art. Whilst it primarily comes from within myself, the excitement of sharing it and the dialogue that follows, whatever the outcome, is where I feel art comes alive and becomes something very powerful.
BB: You’ve spoken about finding beauty in the inaccuracies of handmade pieces. What do you think imperfection can express which perfection might not?
LS: A huge part of my practice is the making of the shaped/object canvases. I currently do all of it myself, which immediately creates a physicality and intimacy to the works. When I first started expanding my technical skills, especially into tailoring and upholstery, I would often get hung up on the small inaccuracies and details in the stitching or form. There was this desire to make an exact replica. Something that felt uncanny and manufactured through its perfection.
It was then that I realised these inaccuracies were an integral part of the work. That no matter how accurate I became, they would still be there in some way. In a sense, they represent what it is to be human, with imperfections, folds, inconsistencies, asymmetries. They give the canvases a feeling of personality, as though they are alive in the creases and folds.
When making, we often talk about happy accidents as something necessary to push the work forward and release a level of control. These often become some of my favourite moments. A good example is in my series of stretched canvas waiting room chairs ‘Where did the time go’ (2024), where the happenstance folds in the linen soften the hard, moulded look of the works into something bodily.
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