Background
Sonia Stewart is a French artist, painter and photographer, who moved from Paris to Sydney with her family in 2015. Her paintings consist mainly of women in a dazed and bewildered state, portraying their vulnerability, with sexual undertones. Her other subject at heart is conveyed through her two boys - contextualising Childhood and its associated angst and innocence.
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Work evolution​
I started my figurative paintings with china ink, painting female portraits that I would find in glossy magazines. I then carried on painting portraits with oils. I fell in love with the smooth forgiving slow paced medium and I followed my inspiration flicking through magazines.
As a photographer I quickly turned to painting my own photographs, switching from my main subject of women to my two boys. Eventually I started staging my photos with them, as models, not subjects. It all became about exploring new perspectives and dimensions, feelings and emotions, childhood and motherhood. These developments helped me shape a very personal style widely influenced by Egon Schiele, my favourite painter
After a decade of painting I realised (however so corny it may sound) I never tried to say anything with my paintings, but it was rather my paintings that started to say something to me, about me. From the beginning up to today, the thread in my work consisted in, wonder, turmoil, anguish, bewilderment and a combination of both vulnerability and strength.
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After exploring the limitless digital world I am now expanding my horizons. Following the two successful exhibitions of my "Covid divas" in 2022, I couldn't help visualising my very colourful girls as ideal patterns for fun and vibrant women apparel. I then decided, after selling the original paintings, that I should make them available as vivid posters or canvasses to lift up home interiors.