“I use colour to express my feelings,” Sonia says. We’ve been chatting for a short while upon two opposite couches in the Youthy attic. It has been a relaxed and open conversation about her craft, the importance of art in today’s consumer society, and her creative process as a painter living in Glebe and its surrounding suburbs for decades. It’s a serendipitous occasion. She has just wrapped up a week-long exhibition a few doors up at The Shop Gallery on Glebe Point Road. We met one afternoon during its closing hours after her portraits—the Denizens of the Inner-West—drew me in from the roadside.
We’re discussing some of her older works. Specifically, a painting of The Valhalla—the cover image of this quarterly issue. “The Valhalla’s always been a wonderful image,” she says of the old cinema as she recalls watching old arthouse films there in the 1980s. Sonia reproduced The Valhalla several years ago however, and through it, “felt a lot of hope, with the beautiful sky”. During this time she lived across the road: “I was in a boarding house on Glebe Point Road for a long time. Because of insecure work. Because I was very nomadic, you know, because of jobs and changing circumstances”.
Sonia’s paintings of Glebe were captured during those isolated years of the recent pandemic. She captures this suburb’s natural vibrancy, and historic architecture. You can feel the warm hugs of early morning sun, and cupped palms beneath the coffee houses.
“They were taken very early in the morning on my way to work,” she says, “I felt this foolish sense of optimism”.
To produce her works, Sonia doesn’t use traditional oil: “I use water-mixable oil,” she says, “because there’s no solvent, it dries quickly, and it looks really good. It’s still considered oil. But it’s a great medium, and yeah, I really love it”.
“I love sitting in coffee shops,” she says, “ it’s just like a way of being alone or contemplating or something. But you’ve got people around you. So it’s very comforting.”
Sonia says that Mark—the owner of Le Petit Tarte on 219 Glebe Point Road—is “a very nice man. And he’s a real community person. So he makes me and other people feel welcome. And he looks after older people too—like myself. And he seems to care about us. So, I feel a lot of warmth when I go there. And, he cares about us. And he also looks after us beyond just customers.”
“When I had an art show, he just offered to help me. He brought customers along to the exhibition. He’s very kind.”
“One of the portraits—Amy—she worked there as a barista.”
Sonia feels a deeper bond with the portrait form—in capturing the beauty of individuality, innate to all, yet bursting through the young creative spirit of Sydney’s Inner-West. “I think urban areas have been a creative hub for young people,” she says, “and to find their people, find their tribe. But that’s why I found it interesting to paint those people. I was drawn to these people I just met in the street or at the cinema or in different jobs. I love the way they decorate themselves, express themselves through their clothing. And I wanted to convey what I felt about them, even though I didn’t know them.”
“For example,” she says, “Rachel with the lovely green hair. I saw her at a bus stop in Newtown. Waiting to go to Glebe—waiting for the 370 bus. And I just said: ‘do you mind if I paint you?’ And she said, oh, ‘that sounds fun’. So, we did that project. And yeah, I’m very happy with the result, and she liked it too.”
“I find it kind of warming as well that no one said no, everyone just said, ‘let’s do it’. I was just really touched. And it was like a little mutual project.”
“And then I got to know them a little bit more. And some people shared music with me. I learned about Sudanese electronic synth music through Attu (shown below), which is very cool, beautiful music. There’s an artist called Jantra. They’re great, and she’s a fan.
Of her recent portrait series—The Denizens of the Inner-West, she says, “They’re beautiful people. And I found they were really nice to talk to. And they were mostly creative people, actresses and acting students, art students.”
“It’s so nice because they just came along at the right time.
It made sense. It’s like the universe sends along a person.”
But I really think creativity is very important—for everyone—as a way of expressing yourself and feeling. Yeah, I think it’s so important for everyone.
Otherwise, we just get this commercial sense of the world, and it’s all about money. And yet, we really feel alive when we’re making stuff, whatever it is.