In Person—574

In 2014, Boston-based painter and Tufts alum Sophia Ainslie (MFA ’01) was commissioned to create a seven-panel mural for the newly-renovated Tufts’ Collaborative Learning and Innovation Complex (CLIC). The monumental work, titled In Person—574, was her largest to date and her first to use digital printing methods.  

In Person—574 spans over 6,000 square feet and four stories of the building’s central stairwell. Ainslie’s imagery is focused on the visual continuum between interior and exterior spaces. Her work forms a “collage-like space” reflecting the relationship between the body and landscape as parallel experiences. Her work combines X-rays, territorial mappings, and sketches of places she has experienced in her immediate environment.  Drawing and painting on paper coexist, as she says, “in a relationship of connections and disconnections between inside and outside, mark-making against flat color, absence and presence.” 

Sophia Ainslie teaches painting at Northeastern University in Boston. She received her MFA from Tufts and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Boston, in 2001. After graduating, she received the Anne and Graham Gund award to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. She is a recipient of the 2012 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for Painting and an Artist’s Resource Trust Grant. Ainslie maintains a studio in Somerville and resides in Arlington, MA. She exhibits actively in the Boston metropolitan area and has participated in residencies in New York City, London, Botswana, and South Africa.