SOPHIE LÉVY BURTON
THE RIVER BENEATH THE RIVER
‘She doesn’t paint feelings; she paints their echoes, their aftershocks, and she does it with apparent effortlessness.’
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Stepping into Sophie Lévy Burton’s studio is like being caught in a storm of colour. At first, the effect is overwhelming; a cacophony of vibrant hues and bold mark-making. But once the eye adjusts, something deeper reveals itself. You’re not drowning, you’re moving. The paintings don’t ask for your attention; they take you by the hand and pull you into an emotional current. These paintings are tidal shifts in pigment and feeling, carrying you somewhere elemental, intuitive, and real.
What happens when emotion is distilled into pure colour, when thought is translated into shape and sensation? Sophie’s work invites us to go beyond the intellectual frameworks of abstraction and into a kind of visual dialogue, one that feels less like looking and more like listening. She doesn’t paint feelings; she paints their echoes, their aftershocks, and she does it with apparent effortlessness.
What strikes me most, when standing before Sophie Lévy Burton’s work, is a kind of psychic excavation, an archaeology of feeling rendered in paint. Her canvases don’t seek to imitate the world, but rather to unearth it, mining its emotional strata and holding it up, glinting, for inspection. There is a fearlessness here, not just in her scale or colour palette, but in the way she allows herself to be vulnerable to the process. These are not paintings that describe, they divine. One thinks, perhaps, of the great abstractionists whose work wasn’t made to be understood, but felt, their brilliance emerging not from precision, but from presence. Burton’s practice, untrained and unbound, recalls that same raw sincerity. She doesn't chase polish; she channels essence.
Sophie Lévy Burton is an artist, writer, and editor. In 2019, she founded MONK, a magazine exploring the intersections of creativity and consciousness. Although she painted as a child, she lost touch with her artistic impulse during her studies in theology at Cambridge. It wasn’t until her 40s that she felt called back to painting. Influenced by artists like Gillian Ayres, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, her work resonates with both spiritual depth and visual intensity. She is currently writing a memoir about her return to creativity through the psychic terrain of abstract painting.
Hester Baldwin - Managing Director 2025
Instagram: @sophielevyburtonart
Website: sophielevyburton.co.uk
