Sophie Ruigrok

Sophie Ruigrok creates networks of images that depict intimate and tactile moments. Ruigrok uses pastels in a reduced palette of auburn and ruddy golden tones to render her compositions. The work has an emotional and atmospheric intensity that comes from examining the minutiae of bodily comunions: small moments are made theatrical, their significance amplified. Ruigrok, interested in Jungian concept of the collective unconscious, takes inspiration from disparate sources including found objects, religious iconography and art-historical motifs. She is especially interested in the relationship between bodily emotion and the spiritual and her scenes reflect the intersection of these realms. 

Sophie Ruigrok was born in London in 1992. In 2015 she received a BA in Modern Languages at University College London before completing The Drawing Year Postgraduate Programme at The Royal Drawing School in 2020. Recent exhibitions include solo presentation today I feel relevant and alive, The Sunday Painter (2022) and group presentations It’s Better to be Cats than to be Loved, Tabula Rasa Gallery (2022); Love is the Devil: Studies after Francis Bacon, Marlborough (2021); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery (2021) and A Grain of Sand, The Sunday Painter (2021). She lives and works in London.