Our current show, Ephemeral Chroma, brings together four artists whose work foregrounds colour as both a deeply personal expression and a shared, affective force. Having studied Fine Art and Design at Liverpool Hope University, Sophie Elsden, Desiree Skellern, Sophie Baskerville, and Roozbeh Rajaie now diverge across abstraction, landscape, and experimental approaches. Binding their practices together is a shared fascination with chroma as something unstable, relational, and profoundly human.

Hi all! Tell us how the idea for this collaboration came about?
Although our practices differ in approach, they share core fundamentals that connect us. Each of our works indulges in colour as a way to explore the breadth of human experience, often playing with order and chaos to reflect the dualities of life. We first became connected at university, not only as friends, but through a deep respect for each other’s dedication and authenticity to our crafts. That respect has carried forward, allowing us to support one another’s creative processes and hold the kind of honest conversations that push our work forward.

This exhibition feels like a natural progression of those bonds. All of us create work that responds to lived experience, and because so many of those experiences have been shared, our practices exist as mirrors of our friendships as well as our identities as artists. Bringing our work together is a way of bringing that full circle.

How did you arrive at the theme of your exhibition?
Our starting point was colour, it felt like the most obvious link between our practices. But as we continued to talk, what we kept returning to was dialogue: painting as a form of communication, a stimulus for conversation, and a reflection of the exchanges that shape both human connection and individual experience.

The title Ephemeral Chroma captures this idea. Colour is fleeting, and its associations are deeply personal, what feels light or joyful to one person might feel heavy or painful to another. The same pale blue might remind someone of their favourite jumper, while for someone else it might recall the last time they saw a loved one without knowing it was the final time. That fragile, shifting nature of both thought and feeling, and the way colour carries those memories, became the heart of the exhibition.

How does collaborating with other artists differ from working alone? Has it required you to change aspects of your practice?
Collaboration has always been rooted in conversation for us, whether that’s sharing recent influences, exchanging processes, or offering advice. Over time, these exchanges have shaped not just how we think about our work, but also how we make it, both in practical and conceptual ways. In this exhibition, we’ve leaned into the idea that our works can create a narrative tension between them, sparking new dialogues that wouldn’t exist if they stood alone.

Working together means welcoming another creative perspective into your space, holding up new mirrors to yourself and your practice. While collaboration brings organisational challenges, especially as we all work on different schedules, the payoff is immeasurable. Having people to celebrate achievements with, to reframe your approach, and to get genuinely excited alongside is invaluable. For us, this process has been a rekindling of the reasons we first connected: a shared respect for each other’s practices and the energy that comes from growing together.

Are there intentional connections or contrasts between each artists’ work in this collaboration?
While we’ve often discussed the similarities in our practices as the foundation for this exhibition, the outcomes of our work are very different. The levels of abstraction we each use, as well as the overall moods of our paintings, vary widely and it’s this contrast that creates intrigue when the works are displayed together.

The differences weren’t engineered or intentional; rather, they reflect our individual ways of responding to the world. That’s what makes the connections between us so strong. We don’t need to force our work into alignment; the shared foundations are already there. The dialogue between similarity and contrast is what gives the exhibition its energy.

Can you elaborate on the significance or symbolism of the chosen title of your exhibition?The word ephemeral speaks to this transience: the way thoughts, feelings, and even entire life experiences can surface and dissolve in an instant. Chroma grounds those ideas in the physical, material presence of paint, the tangible act of making. Together, the title encapsulates the tension we are drawn to as artists, between the permanence of the painted object and the impermanence of the sensations it captures.

By naming the exhibition Ephemeral Chroma, we wanted to suggest that the works are not static, but living dialogues. They absorb, refract, and reshape meaning depending on who encounters them, echoing the conversations we’ve had with each other and extending them outward to the viewer.

Are there specific advantages or challenges associated with working in your chosen mediums?
A shared advantage for all of us is the way painting lends itself to layering. Each of us uses this differently, whether through building colour, combining imagery, or creating surface depth, but layering allows our works to hold multiple ideas, emotions, and experiences at once. It gives the paintings a sense of time, of things accumulating and shifting, which feels true to the way we process life.

The challenge of working in this way is knowing when to stop. Layers can quickly tip from richness into excess, and part of the process is constantly negotiating between order and chaos, intention and accident. It requires patience, trust, and sometimes the willingness to cover over or let go of passages that once felt vital.

What we value most, though, is how this shared approach gives our very different practices a subtle resonance. Each painting becomes more than a single image, it’s a record of thought, memory, and conversation building over time.

Ephemeral Chroma runs at Six Foot Gallery until 26th September.