Sonya Iwasiuk

Website: www.sonyaiwasiuk.com

Area of Operation: BC

Sonya is a self-taught mixed media artist working in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada but was raised in small towns and on farms in Northern Alberta. Iconic Canadian skies on endless fields pocked with deserted homesteads and thin woodlands developed her deep love for both nature and the abandoned. As a child, she and her dog would journey along dirt roads and train tracks and fields and forests in search of adventure, empty farms and the small treasures she would surely find there. Armed with her faded rucksack, rope, and a hammer, Sonya would unearth jewels of old jars, worn egg shiners, wooden handles made smooth by toil and tractor parts buried like fossil bones in the dust of topsoil. She discovered every abandoned farm was a place of memory, a history of the forgotten lives of the people who once lived there. Still an avid explorer, artist, and storyteller, it is Sonya’s inspiration to give sense, scope, and remembrance to the lives of these ancestors and originators of the Canadian pioneering spirit. She captures the pureness and beauty or harshness and dark realities of nature, places, people and things that are often never seen or overlooked. Sonya studied art in Winnipeg and began her career as a graphic artist in 1991. Fine art was her true calling and over the years, her medium and style have grown from a focus on expressionism painting to her current interests; mixed media painting, public art, installations and teaching.

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