• Sara Pope

    Contemporary artist Sara Pope is best known for her glossy, colourful, pop paintings of lips. Taking inspiration from a successful career in the fashion industry as a shoe designer as well as her work in magazines as a designer and art director, Sara aims to capture the sensuality, beauty and power conveyed by the lips and mouth. Interested in notions of beauty, communication, and the concept of perfection, Sara uses the perspective of her commercial experience to explore these themes.

    The starting point is a makeup brush and a lipstick. She paints the models’ lips, then, using specific techniques of makeup and lighting, she begins the process of creating the perfect lips.  She asks the model, to express different emotions which she captures photographically. Using these shots as inspiration she begins the artwork. The painting process involves several layers of thin oil-diluted paint being overlaid, blending and smoothing the colours extensively at every stage, sometimes also mixing lipstick into the paint. Emulating the stylistic slickness of advertising, the result is glossy, perfect and irresistible.

    Pope’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and art fairs across London and internationally, including The Saatchi Gallery, London, Next Street Gallery, Paris, The London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy of Arts and SCOPE Miami. Sara sells work regularly at auction at Bonhams Auction House and is also the first British female artist in over 70 years to have a piece of work accepted into the Vatican collection.