the red dream.
Sophie Bass, Bristol based illustrator. Contact me here for commissions or queries - sophbass@googlemail.com
My work focuses primarily on human nature. I am interested in our place in the universe, sex, death, birth, our sensual relationship with the natural world we inhabit, all things disgusting and exciting, music, masquerade, chaos, dreams and nightmares. With my Trinidadian heritage a huge part of my life I instinctively found myself looking towards their folk and naive art. Stylistically, and with the same focus on mythology and symbolism, my work became influenced by folk and naive art from many different cultures. The untrained eye is fascinating to me. Creating fills me with an innate joy, and I seek to produce highly decorative work whilst still remaining meaningful.All my prints can be done to order, just email me with the image and size you want :)
INSTAGRAM: @sophiebass_illustration
severe sleep paralysis is emotionally and physically exhausting. i find the experience too complex and intimate to verbalise still, even after so long with it. trapped in a hallucinatory space between conscious and unconscious, psychotically unaware of whether i am real or a figment of a violent imagination. it takes an eternity to escape from, and leaves me empty and frightened.
sleep paralysis has been documented for at least 300 years - Extract from a 1664 case report from Dutch physician Isbrand Van Diemerbroeck ‘Of the Nightmare:‘
“in the night time, when she was composing herself to sleep, sometimes she believed the devil lay upon her and held her down, sometimes that she was choked by a great dog or thief lying upon her breast, so that she could hardly speak or breath and when she endeavoured to throw off the burthen, she was not able to stir her members.”
I know dem feels.
Speak earth and bless me with what is richest
make sky flow honey out of my hips
rigid as mountains
spread over a valley
carved out by the mouth of rain.
And I knew when I entered her I was
high wind in her forests hollow
fingers whispering sound
honey flowed
from the split cup
impaled on a lance of tongues
on the tips of her breasts on her navel
and my breath
howling into her entrances
through lungs of pain.
Greedy as herring-gulls
or a child
I swing out over the earth
over and over
again.“ - Love Poem, Audre Lorde
La Diablesse is the Devil woman in Caribbean Folklore.. She appears with the full moon, haunting old plantations and winding mountain roads. Singing an old Patois rhythm, she enchants men who become wild with lust. But her wide brimmed hat hides her secret, her hideous dead face, and the full skirts of her old Martinique dress hide her cow hoof leg.. Once she lures her prey into seclusion, she reveals herself - shrieking KISS ME KISS ME!!!! The men, delirious with fear, lose themselves in the maze of the forest and starve to death.
Piece for the ‘Prints Charming’ exhibition that will be raising funds for Art Refuge UK, an amazing vital charity who help refugees through art and art therapy.
Hamilton House Gallery, Stokes Croft, Bristol. 13th-18th September 2016.
For Pride on Saturday: let LOVE drive out hatred - ignorance and prejudice will not win! celebrate today for those who can’t and those who fear to.
TREE OF LIFE
section of a bigger piece i am working on right about NOW!
been going to life drawing for the first time since university!
the drawing soph worked from to create her magical goldwork piece
‘Golden wombs’ collaboration with my best friend little soph (insta @sophiegloverdrawing)
For the strength, beauty, power and tenderness of womanhood.
Goldwork by the genius that is soph, womb by me.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY PARENTS, BOTH 58 TODAYYYYY!!!!!