What do you paint?
Things I love, things in life.
Sonia Wise
Sonia Wise (b.1968)
Sonia Wise paints intuitively – often acrylic on rough boards but at times, when the image will benefit from a 3D quality, with collage and mixed media.
Combining bright, overtly joyful colours and simple forms, Sonia’s works have the directness and veracity of Naïve or Outsider Art. Although representing everyday objects in the tradition of still-life paintings, her pieces have a mature charm and humour often lost by formal artistic education.
A wonderful collection of Cornish pots – jugs, vases and bowls fill Wise’s house. These forms, and the vibrant fabrics they share a home, have become Wise’s inspiration. Her love of well crafted and honest materials is reflected in her paintings. Often working on boards stuck together by her father, the paintings themselves become objects which celebrate the home made; good craftsmanship and raw material.
As a gardener by trade, Sonia understands the therapeutic and creative value of gardening. A % of sales will go to Bridewell Gardens, a charity that brings these benefits to a wider community.
To describe Sonia’s paintings as ‘things in life’ is to get to the heart of their vitality. Taking inspiration from her own physical surroundings, Sonia uses her art to capture the inherent character of the objects that make up our lives.
Combining bright, overtly joyful colours and simple forms, Sonia’s works have the directness and veracity of Naïve or Outsider Art. Like many, Sonia enjoyed making art at school, but chose not to pursue it as a career, only returning to it in the last thirteen years and truly concentrating on it only since her children left home six years ago. Apart from a few classes where she learnt key practical techniques, Sonia is completely self-taught and her process is one of constant experimentation, mixing pigments and using collage elements, or making her own linocuts to build up patterned backgrounds. Her process is one of layering – sometimes painting over a pre-existing work, and working into the underlayers to create a textured background – that reflects the history of the objects around her. Similarly, collage elements are her way of replicating the tactile nature of the ceramics and fabrics she depicts.
The pots, vases and jugs that populate Sonia’s compositions are mostly selected from the wide and ever-changing collection that she has built over many years. Working in her studio, she tends to paint from life, although imagination plays an important role too, and is important to a more general sense of creative freedom that Sonia finds in painting. Coveted pots, found in books or online, also make their way into her artworks and palettes shift according to mood. The colours are hugely important – Sonia describes herself as being surrounded by colour in her home, and this is evident in her paintings. Bold blues and oranges (a particular favourite) are framed with lime green and black or her distinctive red and white stripes. The works are full of vibrancy and powerful contrasts that direct the movement of the compositions.
Working in her studio, Sonia tends to paint from life.
Part of their energy also comes from the way her materials are used and celebrated for their individual properties. In many cases, the materials are – or come from – objects themselves. Old floorboards are assembled into flat supports (usually by Sonia’s father) or Sonia recycles boards from old pine cupboards or chest of drawers, using objects that have sometimes been in her family for years. Each one has its own history and character, and although the surfaces are sanded down and prepared for painting, the edges are left raw, holes are unfilled and the idiosyncrasies of the original object are preserved. Sonia considers this act of recycling and reuse a more natural process, and one in-keeping with her wider approach (to art and life).
This artistic journey is one of self-belief. Like many of us, Sonia has surrounded herself with things she loves, and so she paints what she loves. It is a very personal process, and a therapeutic one. Much like the gardening that has been her profession for 17 years, painting brings a joy in the act of creation. This joy is self-evident in Sonia’s work and it is what makes her paintings so characterful, and uplifting to behold.
