Russell Fenn, better known as Sofles has painted 2 artworks for Tumby Bay – the painting on 3 sides of a refrigerated trailer owned by Smith Haulage, which travels all over Australia as well as the 2025 piece on Curtis’ shed in Spencer Street.
Sofles is an Australian graffiti artist originating from Brisbane. He is self-taught and uses various mediums such as spray paints, acrylic, drawing and brush painting, as wll as digital and illustration works.
Sofles –Artist Statement
This explanation is as told to us by Sofles with some slight paraphrasing.
For this piece it was a really unique building, so to be able to have a piece that adds moving parts to it was pretty special. It was a very hard surface to paint, but with the moving doors, I thought I would take on the challenge.
I had to find an image that would work when the doors move in different formations so I decided to go with the female face. I like to paint them as the basis of a lot of my artwork, and then I put lots of symbolism and shapes and little images around that.
For this one I wanted to create a natural palette so I used the greens and oranges and browns, and that’s a real “naturey” sort of pallete. I wanted it to be soft but also to show a bit of homage to the land and to the beautiful place that we live in, and all the beautiful nature around us. I spend a lot of time in nature and these are a lot of the colours I see, but I do a slightly more highly pigmented version of it. I wanted it to be really bright but natural.
I wanted to have a happy feeling to it, hence the image of the girl smiling, and then I put lots of different little images through it. If you look closely you will see peace signs, smiley faces, love hearts, flowers, but then it still has a bit of gritty stuff like some tattoos and some cool patterns and things like that. So it is a compilation of a lot of things that I like to put together, I also like to leave it a little bit open for people to make up their own interpretation of it.
I know that a kid will see something different than a grandparent, so I hope that everyone can enjoy it for what it is, and they can see different things in it and they can what they want from it. It’s got a lot of influence from the universal energy and the galaxy, but then also, all the beautiful nature that we have here. I like to use a lot of pattern work. I think that really complements and it sends your eye around the painting.