About Sophia Smarts
About the Artist
- I am a digital collage artist who works with what I call The Frankenstein Technique... a deeply personal method of constructing new beings from fragments of real lives. Using photographs of myself, along with images generously shared by family and friends, I create entirely new digital versions of the human form. Every image comes from personal photo archives or from individuals who intentionally choose to become part of the work, allowing the art to hold both memory and identity.This same technique extends into my animal portraits, where I sometimes merge animal and human elements to imagine entirely new digital species.
- Each piece begins on a blank canvas and is built layer by layer using Adobe Photoshop and CorelDRAW. A single artwork can contain hundreds of layers before it feels complete. I never start with a plan... discovery guides the process. Once the images are stitched, blended, and refined, the final form reveals itself organically. At times, I print finished digital works and add hand-drawn details with markers before photographing and re-entering them into the digital workflow. This exchange between physical and digital creation adds texture, intimacy, and unpredictability to the final piece.
- Every completed artwork becomes part of an evolving collage inventory. Fragments from past pieces... eyes, lips, hair, and other elements are reused and reimagined in future works, much like paper dolls with interchangeable parts. This growing visual archive allows each new piece to carry traces of what came before. While portraiture remains central to my practice, I also create abstract work, often blending elements of surrealism and cubism. Music plays an essential role in my creative process. Trance-like soundscapes and techno rhythms transport me into a focused, meditative state where the work can fully unfold. Storytelling is inseparable from my art. Each piece is accompanied by a narrative that gives the portrait its voice and completes the creative cycle.
- I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History with a focus on Studio Art.
PORTRAITS
- I am deeply drawn to close-up portraiture. Most of my work centers on faces, because a powerful portrait asks us to pause, to look closer, and to wonder about the person within. Faces carry stories, contradictions, memory, and emotion, often all at once.
- In my work, faces become layered constructions rather than fixed identities. Through digital collage, I deconstruct and rebuild them, allowing fragments of many lives to merge into something new. The result is both familiar and unfamiliar, a reflection of how complex, layered, and endlessly fascinating the human experience truly is.
WHY ARE WE DRAWN TO FACES?
- One reason faces are so compelling is that humans are biologically wired to respond to them. Our survival has always depended on living in small, social groups and being able to read one another’s facial expressions. Faces are our earliest language. A human face can communicate an extraordinary range of emotion with the smallest shift. The slightest adjustment can completely alter the emotional tone of a portrait, transforming how it is read and felt. It’s remarkable how much meaning lives in such subtle changes.