My creative work has covered a plethora of genres but I have a passion for mixed media painting and mark making techniques, collage, montage and textiles. There is always a strong sense of narrative which flows throughout my work exploring the concept of memory and gathering nostalgic snippets of an experience or moment in time. My latest work explores surface quality, the panorama vista and the landscape. Capturing the environment, atmosphere and our interaction between the present and a memory. Layers of collage and paint are applied and removed revealing the fine layers of colour and highly textural elements. This is then enhanced through energetic mark making and line and combining a variety of brush marks and on occasions stitch. I want these to simply dance around the canvas and evoke the atmosphere of that place and space.
After completing a BA Hons in Textile Design in Nottingham, specializing in embroidered sculptural textiles and fashion. I proceeded with my post graduate teaching qualification in Liverpool, resulting in twenty plus years of teaching in schools and colleges across the North West of England alongside my work as a practising artist.
My educational work covers Art, Painting, Textiles, Fashion and Photography to a range of ages up to examination and undergraduate level. I very much enjoy the teaching aspects coupled with the opportunity to expand creatively. This is something which runs simultaneously with my own practice.
I have exhibited regularly in various galleries and in November 2017 I launched my online gallery and website. This has provided me with a virtual platform to exhibit my work, 

My  collection of paintings in a range of subtle hues based on my visits to the beautiful locations and rocky and pebble landscapes. A series which incorporates a soft subtle colour palette designed to ease into a range of interior settings. Thus providing peaceful, calm and tranquil compositions. The paintings reflect my location visits. Explore and wander across the beautiful honey coloured beaches, and panoramic vistas, enhanced with soft greys and plaster pinks and indulge in the more abstract linear compositions which overlay each surface allowing art to take us elsewhere.  
My passion for art is possibly summed up best in this quote by William Morris
‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’
The beauty of Art is not just in the visual but in the sensual and the powerful emotional response it can stir within us.     Sophie Hardisty