Art: Sophie Blackall

Brooklyn-based artist, Sophie Blackall, regularly creates paintings based on real, anonymous messages posted online by strangers seeking other strangers they met in a chance encounter. By adding illustration to missed connections classifieds, Ms. Sophie Blackall takes text that already stimulates the imagination and creates something marvelously new. The best illustrators build upon the literal translation of words into images by creating a unique visual poetry. Paper Darts has always been fascinated by the sonic boom that happens when art and words collide, as demonstrated by our regular promotion of illustrators as Artists (with a well deserved capitol A).  You very well may know Sophie's work already, but we want to officially celebrate her upcoming book by making her our featured artist for the month of October.

(Workman Publishing)Sophie was gracious enough to allow us to publish a gallery of her work on our site, and we could not be more thrilled. Her art is intelligent and intricate, and beyond its immediate beauty it works to extend the text into your mind by burrowing new images and new possibilities into the words. Her work makes  you wonder why, as adult readers, we resist the other-worldly context of illustration. Are we afraid of our imaginations? Or do we believe that by adulthood, our imaginations are so finely tuned, that to invite artistic interpretation would ruin the complex world words create for us? Few people see the world like Sophie Blackall. Once you are inside her world of Missed Connections, of wistful and lustful dreamers brought to life, you'll realize exactly the kind of imagination and possibility the adult world of illustration and literature is missing.  

 

All rights reserved to Sophie Blackall.