Sophia Jodoin

Sophia Jodoin was born in 1965 and received a bachelor of fine arts from Concordia University in Montreal. She mainly does figurative drawing with traditional media such as pencil and acrylic paint.  All her artwork is mainly only black and white with no colour at all. She does series of drawings that all relate to each other over a few years and then puts them together in a group; I think she does this so she can create multiple observations of a subject instead of just one piece so the viewer can see the subject from different viewpoints.

Sophia Jodoin, DRAWING SHADOWS; PORTRAITS OF MY MOTHER (2004), Charcoal pastel and acrylic paint (http://sophiejodoin.com/site/oeuvres-works ) 

In this piece there is a solid black background with a woman`s figure drawn in the centre of the paper with the top of her is very bright white and then begins to fade to darker shades of grey and eventually black. Tone features predominately throughout the piece as it is all about the contrast of light and dark. She creates depth and a sense of realism by using different shades of white eventually getting darker. The relationship between the shades is also a very big part of the drawing as they are complete opposites. The work was done on a 30 x 22” which is quite large, I think she created the piece on such a large piece of paper so she could be creative and expressive with her marks as there are some marks around the main figure that indicate light and seem to be more expressive. On the figure the highlights are all at the top and the drawing eventually fades towards the bottom, so the eyes are naturally drawn towards the top of the drawing then to the bottom. I think this is done as she was only trying to capture the essential lines and tones to represent the subject so it didn’t over complicate the piece.

The subject in question is the artists mother. The mother is seen as a gentle, nurturing and loving role in a child’s life, the artist has chosen to paint her in a very contradicting way as she has painted her as if she were a stone gargoyle which is cold and dead. These 2 ideas of the role the mother is generally seen as and the way the artist has portrayed he contradict each other completely.

Traditionally in portraits the subjects face is shown where as in this piece the back is shown, this makes the viewer question why they cannot see the face.

I am influenced by Jodoin`s work as the tones she uses contradict themselves as they are completely the opposite of each other. I can use the media she uses to show contradictions in colour.