Sophie Walbeoffe is a British painter who lives and works between Kenya and the UK. Her practice is rooted in direct observation of landscape, animals and daily life, particularly in East Africa, where light, colour, and movement shape both her imagery and her way of working.
She paints in watercolour, gouache and oil, often using both hands in the process — a technique she developed to keep the work fluid, open and responsive. This approach allows chance, rhythm, and sensation to play an active role in the finished image. Her paintings frequently depict elephants, birds, gardens, houses, rivers, and human presence within nature, forming a quiet narrative world that feels both Edenic and deeply personal.
Sophie trained in London, including at Wimbledon School of Art and through private study with Cecil Collins, whose emphasis on imagination and inner vision continues to inform her work. She has exhibited widely in the UK, the Middle East and Africa, and her paintings have been shown internationally at major art fairs in London, Singapore, Miami and Toronto.
She is represented by Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, and her work is held in private and corporate collections worldwide.
Alongside her fine-art practice, Sophie is also an illustrator and co-creator of the children’s book Pepper and Poncho: Adventures on the African Plains, published in 2024, which draws on her life in Kenya and her close relationship with animals and landscape.
Her current work explores ideas of paradise, memory and light — places where the outer world and the inner imagination quietly meet.
Upcoming Events
January 2027
Maharanga Fort Jodhpur -
At the Invitation of His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh ii (Bapji)
I want these paintings to feel at home among the weathered murals of India’s old palaces—to evoke the centuries of painting, storytelling and human presence held within their walls.
I am drawn to faded colour, crumbling plaster and fragments of decoration that survive through time. In my paintings, animals, trees and architecture emerge through layers of colour, while patterns appear and dissolve across the surface.
I want that mingling of richness and fragility: the feeling that an image has been partly lost, yet is still full of life.
These are my own imagined worlds, shaped by looking and painting in India, with an awareness of the generations of artists who have painted there before me
Sophies work has been shown with The Rebecca Hossack Gallery at major international art fairs — most recently in Singapore, Miami, Toronto, and London
