Finlay Sandiford BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation

Finlay Sandiford

Finlay Sandiford began his professional artistic journey when attending The Manchester School of Art in 2018. Since then, he has participated in a number of collaborative and independent projects including illustrated prints, comics, installations, and even a documentary.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Finlay Sandiford is primarily self-taught and has his own approach to, and definition of, art. He is a constant risk-taker who believes that inspiration can be found wherever he looks. As a transgender man, he focuses a lot of his art on his identity and transition, exploring feelings of acceptance and dysphoria through colourful, graphic illustrations, defined by his bold linework and a focus on gendered characters and symbols. His work discusses themes of gender dysphoria, isolation, mental health, and individuality.

Finlay works with a wide span of mediums and discipline. His prints are largely a marriage between traditional illustration and digital editing; his experimental pieces, on the other hand, are a combination of spray-paint over textile or woodwork, detailed with acrylic illustrations. In the future, Finlay intends to continue filling the huge gap in transgender representation through more mixed-media installations and plans to expand his work into textile and clothes designing.