Spirit of Africa - Sophia Chalken

Sophia is a Fine Art Contemporary Wildlife and Nature Artist, specialising in high
quality oil paintings. Known for her powerfully evocative paintings created
through vibrant colours, light and intricate detail, with some of her art embellished
with 24ct Gold and Silver leaf and it has been said many times to have “a spiritual
feel to it”.

The creative journey began at Winchester school of Art where she completed her
BA specialising in Textile design. This led to a job as a textile designer for various
big-name high-street stores, designing soft furnishings and ceramics.

Soon after Sophia was head hunted for a job as a Fine jewellery designer for the
Crown Jewellers Asprey and Garrard, working with Royalty, celebrities and the
elite. Sophia’s intricate designs included tiaras, Jewellery suites, rings, watches,
Faberge eggs, enamel clocks and much more. Sophia also created many impressive
pieces for middle eastern royalty. She studied gemmology, became an expert in her
field and her attention to detail leant well to her career.

After starting a family Sophia decided to work for herself and set up a small
business teaching art to a wide range of ages ranging from 5 years old to 90-year-
olds in care homes. It was very rewarding and the students looked forward to her
classes.

Having always being creative, her fine art career was born out of the pandemic.
During this time Covid had a profound impact on her health and she became quite
unwell for over 6 months and was unable to walk. In order to mentally cope,
Sophia decided to paint and began to build up her own work as an Artist. She
began to display her work on social media which allowed her work to be seen and
this led to her gaining regular commissions, as well as being approached by gallery
owners, who she now works with as a full-time artist selling in galleries around
England.

Wildlife plays a big part in Sophia’s Art and supporting various charities that work
in conservation. She is delighted to be in a position to be able to raise money
through her art sales and make sizeable donations to them, which is very important
to her.

Sophia finds both art and her appreciation of nature an amazing form of therapy
and escapism, deep happiness for her comes from being able to combine the two.
Satisfaction from finishing a challenging piece is highly rewarding in itself, but
Sophia says, “the best part is when a client truly connects emotionally to my art”, then I know the value of joy that piece will continually bring.