Lemya el Sophia

Lemya el Sophia (born September 9, 1979 in New York, NY) is an American artist working across a wide range of media — painting, photography, drawing and filmmaking. Primarily self-taught in art form, she learned to photograph and work with wood from her father and sew and draw by her mother.

Finding creative muses from outside the realm of the artistic world, the work narrates the overlap between our collective subconscious, relationships between universal atomic phyisicalities and the norms of everyday life, especially that of urban life. In her mixed media paintings the artist utilizes photographs, still shots from her films, newspapers, and other literature as a source of narrative imagery. In the past several years, major hardware stores have been the suppliers of art materials in her work.

Building a repertoire of art collectors since her mid-teens while managing a screen printing studio, the beginnings of her art career started after receiving her first award for a still life watercolor painting done in an impressionist style at the age of 7. Since opening her first art studio in downtown NYC October 2000, Lemya el Sophia has conducted her own business dealings through self-representation in the New York art market and promoting her art internationally through internet endeavours.

Her paintings continue to be exhibited in solo and group shows in the United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle-East. Interior designers, gallery owners and art dealers and consultants attend the trade only studio open houses in SoHo New York City twice a year.

Lemya el Sophia's large scale mixed media works can be found in international private, corporate and museum collections in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, United Kingdom, Italy, Scotland, Spain, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa, Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Israel, Iraq, India, China, Thailand, Japan, and Australia.

The artist's most noted commission came from an avid art collector, a Saudi Arabian Prince introduced to her by a family member, in which she built an entire wall of his newly constructed Egyptian villa in the Giza city of 6th of October with wood, plastic sheets, collage materials, sand from the red sea, paints, plaster and wax.

More recently, Lemya el sophia has moved towards creative autonomy by shooting her own digital movies. Major influences in her films is 1920's early avante-garde cinema, such as those of director and artist Man Ray and contemporary directors Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch.

Critics have been notoriously unfavorable towards Lemya el Sophia mainly due to her persistence to succeed using untraditional methods and outside the customary art system.

Lemya el Sophia is married to Fred Abrahim, a native of Israel and owner of an international brokerage firm. The couple have lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan since 2002.