SOPHIE MCBRIARTY:ARTIST

Where are you from, where did you grow up?

I was born in North Shields but we moved to Sunderland when I was about one, much to my dad’s dismay. We had to move because we kept getting robbed, like full on house robbery, every single thing gone from the house. I lived in Sunderland until I was 19 when I went to uni in Manchester.

Sunderland’s a bit of a weird place really, it almost feels a bit desolate, there’s not much going on. It used to have a ship building industry, my granddad actually was chief engineer on ships but all of that went away because of Margaret Thatcher and now there’s a complete lack of jobs there. Basically the only thing to do was drink. You drink and go to football, everyone’s obsessed with football.

Maybe it’s a little bit different now, maybe there’s a few more opportunities but you feel really proud of anyone that manages to succeed, do you know what I mean? Everyone from the North East absolutely adores Sam Fender, regardless of whether they like his music because he’s a proper success story and still lives in North Shields. He still goes to the same pub where he used to work and he gave them his Brit Award to use as a beer pump!

Did you enjoy growing up there?

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it because being an artist, there was just nothing there. Everyone takes the mick out of you for wanting to do art. It just sort of feels depressing when you’re in love with something and no one cares about it whatsoever.

My mum and dad were supportive though. They took me on holiday to see Monet’s house in France as a surprise once! And they bought me Van Gogh pastels because I was in love with Van Gogh and I used to draw the sunflowers over and over again. I think they tried to turn me off at a little bit sometimes going, ‘Is this really going to make you any money? Most artists aren’t famous until they die.’ And I just thought, ‘I don’t care’.

I had really encouraging teachers in school and in college but university was a different story. I feel like it was just constant criticism and my tutoring wasn’t actually that good for me. It was a bit weird to be honest because I basically did no painting the whole time that I was on the course. University feels like a bit of a weird blip almost. I did a little bit of painting right at the start and they were like, ‘That’s wrong, you shouldn’t make art about yourself, it’s awful when artists are too close to their work’. That put a fear in me that I was doing everything wrong.

My sister’s got Aspergers so I was making art about that, about mental health issues, stuff to do with me but it wasn’t really about me. I thought, ‘Isn’t that what art is?. Doesn’t every artist make work to do with themselves in some way?’ 

I ended up just doing loads of crap to be honest. It threw me and I ended up just making art about what I thought they wanted me to do, which is awful because it’s never going to be good. Then I had to take some time out in the second year and I stayed at home in Sunderland for three months when everyone was still at uni which was really hard.

Do you feel like you had a good experience of going to university in Manchester overall?

I got the shock of my life moving to Manchester because the prices compared to the North East were unbelievable. I went through all of my student loan straight away. Everyone tells you that when you move to uni and move into halls you make all these amazing friends but to be honest that didn’t really happen for me. I made friends with people on my course but that period of time where I had to leave and go back home for a while, that sort of made us grow apart. There’s not a lot of people that I still speak to.

What did you do after you graduated?

I already worked at the Jurys Inn and I was like right, I’ve just got to go full time but it drained me of all energy. I didn’t make any art for about two years. When you’ve got no energy whatsoever, no mental energy, it’s like artist’s block. 

It was actually meeting a big group of new friends that I made after university that got my creativity going again. A lot of them were circus performers, textile artists, they would make their own clothes, they would do all this different, crazy stuff, they just got my energy back up in terms of creativity. 

How did you find those people?

I moved into a shared house and one of the girls living there was friends with this group of people that call themselves ‘The Weirdos’. It’s a bit strange really, it started with like six people who just found loads of different creative people over the years and it’s now become this massive group of friends, the Facebook group has about 500 people now. I just absolutely fell in love with them all. They put on their own festivals and I’ve been to so many crazy, weird parties. 

It’s a group that’s basically for people who have maybe struggled to make friends or maybe they feel like they don’t quite fit in. They put on nights like Alt Femme where they have an ‘Emasculation Station’ where all the men are made to dress up as women. It’s just meant to make you feel a bit more free. Honestly, every person that’s ever been introduced to the group has found it really freeing because everyone’s just so accepting of everyone, it’s really nice. That’s why I got a lot of creativity coming back to me because they encouraged it completely.

And that brought you back to painting?

Someone from the group asked me if I would draw their house. I posted a photo of it on social and then loads of people started paying me to do drawings and watercolour paintings for gifts. After that I actually got a bit of a weird commission from an anonymous donor, that’s how I really got back into it. 

During lockdown, a friend from The Weirdos got in touch with me about this donor that wanted to commission me to do a painting. I was literally given no information about it, not even who it’s going to, nothing. Just that it had to be a painting about the key workers and it had to be something to do with Salford. 

Luckily I already had a big canvas and frame at my house, it was weird, like it was almost supposed to happen. I started painting it in my living room in a shared house, during lockdown, it was a really hot summer and it was a real struggle. There was a thunderstorm one night and water started pouring down through the roof. It was very stressful and it took me about six weeks to paint. 

One day someone came and picked it up and it was only then that I found out it was going to Salford City Council. It was basically being dropped off with a note that just said ‘Thank you to our key workers’. The next thing I know, my painting was on BBC and ITV News and they were asking, ‘Who is this artist? Who painted it?’ Later the Mayor of Salford made a YouTube video about it. It was supposed to be about the key workers rather than us getting any attention so I didn’t come forward for nearly three months. 

The painting ended up going to the Lowry which was so amazing because I love Lowry, I’m obsessed. Bear in mind I’d recently only been drawing little pictures of people’s houses and hadn’t really done any art for years. I was starting to think, ‘Can I even do art anymore?’ It was this huge turn around for me and I felt that when something like this happens you just have to go, ‘Right, I need to get back into this and actually care about this again and really go for it!’ 

It all happened serendipitously. Now I’ve got a shared studio in Ancoats and I’ve been creating more and more work. That key worker painting is now a permanent part of the Lowry collection and since then I’ve been lucky enough to be part of other exhibitions with more coming in the future so it’s all just fallen into place.

I found out about you because I loved your painting of Boris Johnson at HOME’s open exhibition. What inspired you to paint that piece? 

I remember seeing Piers Morgan talking about Boris Johnson and I think it’s the only thing I’ve ever liked that Piers Morgan has said. He was talking about this clip where Boris Johnson was in a woodwork shop just a few days after he’d made up the COVID restriction rules. He was just making an absolute arse of himself and was in this workshop breathing all over people’s shoulders and wearing his mask on his chin or actually maybe even not wearing a mask at all. Every other single person was wearing a mask and he was just bumbling around and he couldn’t shave the wood properly and I just thought, ‘What are you doing? What is this whole trip to a wood workshop all about?’ I just thought he’s just such an idiot and I wanted to make a painting about it. 

Where can people see more of your work?

You can check out my Instagram and I’m part of an exhibition called ‘Stories’ in Bankley Gallery in Levenshulme on 17th June. Next year I’ve got a solo exhibition at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, I’m not sure of the dates just yet but I’m excited.

How do your mum and dad feel now about making a living out of being an artist?

I think they know it’s very difficult but they’re extremely supportive of me and they always come to all my exhibitions and all that kind of stuff. They’ve resigned themselves to the fact that maybe I’ll be a poor starving artist for the rest of my life but at least I’ll be doing what I like to do and I’ll be happy.

To find out more about Sophie follow @sophie.mcbriarty

Interview and photos by Blossom. Email: christian@blossommanchester.co.uk