Sophie Charalambous (b. 1971) is a London based artist, working between paper drawing, watercolour and mono-printing. She regularly visits Cyprus (she is half British/half Cypriot) and in her work the Island's flora, fauna, folk art, ancient history and festivals are re-imagined into personal landscapes which fuse the old world and the observed present.
Her experience in theatre-design is evident in her work through her treatment of space and light, employing shadow, scale and a heightened sense of reality with elements taken from both life and imagination. Charalambous won the Jerwood Printmaking Today Prize 2020, the Sunday Times Watercolour Prize 2018, the David Gluck Memorial Drawing Prize 2017. Her large watercolour x Church in the Mountains was included in Prince and Patron a 2018 exhibition at Buckingham Palace. She trained as an undergraduate at Brighton University (BA Hons Fine Art Painting), before postgraduate studies at the Motley Theatre Design Course and The Royal Drawing School, where she is now a member of the teaching faculty.
Night Flowering Prickly Pair’ is part of a series of large watercolour paintings exploring the secret life of the Prickly Pear Cactus known in Cyprus as “Papoutsosiko”. The plant becomes a motif to explore natural cycles and symbiotic systems. Inspired by the idea of the elusive night flowering cereus and all things belonging to the night, In this work, Sophie Charalambous imagines the nocturnal world of the plant.
