ABOUT Sonja

Seeking to create works that feel joyful and alive

“Sonja’s work is driven by her love of colour, and her fascination with its ability, together with form, to evoke positive emotions and uplift the human spirit. With a vivid palette and dynamic gestures, she paints from an attentive observation of colour and form in the everyday beauty around her.”

Sonja Dahlgren (b 1973) is a contemporary abstract painter based in Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden.

THE “WHY”

Sonja’s work is driven by her love of colour, and her fascination with its ability, together with form, to evoke positive emotions and uplift the human spirit, thus she intentionally focuses on capturing joy, simplicity and a sense of aliveness in her work, investigating how these qualities can emerge through bold colours, gestural brushstrokes, abstract (and semi-abstract) shapes, and lines. She finds the inspiration for most of her work through an attentive observation of colour and form in the everyday beauty around her. For the viewer, she wants her work to spark curiosity, as well as an appreciation for beauty in the ordinary, and to feel joyful, alive and “raw” - almost like a sigh of relief.

THE creative process

Sonja’s approach to painting is equal parts deliberate and intuitive, moving between structure and spontaneity to create rhythm, aliveness and harmony. She likes to work with a loose idea, often derived from an everyday observation, then starting out with sketches. Her preferred medium is acrylic paint, but she occasionally uses gouache, oil pastels, oil and oil sticks. Sonja loves working with paper (including collage), especially for the way it lends an artwork the feel of fragility and impermanence. When she works on canvas, she puts a lot of effort into creating primed surfaces that feels “raw” and imperfect, reminiscent of grainy handmade paper.

Although Sonja’s paintings often read as abstract or semi-abstract, their colours and forms are frequently drawn from her surroundings, such as; nature, flowers in her garden, the marina near her home, art history, fashion and architecture. Sonja’s work is informed by fauvism, abstract expressionism, minimalism and the colour field painting movement, and the work of e.g. Henri Matisse, Ellsworth Kelly and Imi Knoebel.

THE Background

Sonja is a self-taught painter, and before committing fully to painting, her professional journey spanned several creative and human-centred fields. Her education includes a bachelor of early childhood education, a masters degree in psychology and several university courses in photography, visual communication and graphic design. She began her career as an early years teacher, later worked as a lifestyle/food photographer and food stylist, and then practiced as a couple’s therapist. Over time, her lifelong engagement with creativity and visual expression led her to focus seriously on fine art, and develop a studio practice grounded in her love of colour.