Sonja Haroldson

Through colorful paintings and quiet drawings, I explore how to translate my surroundings into images that highlight and expand little moments that make up a life.

Over the last few years I have been exploring my apartment as a subject in my work, watching my home become a place for brilliance and insanity alike. This self-reflection allowed for new assessments of how I interact within my built space — a space which existed long before my presence, but whose personality I have inevitably altered. As figures creep in and out of my images, the space acts as a vessel for the figure's persona to inhabit, and perhaps the space grows its own persona.

I began this series to use my home as a template for investigating colour relationships more deeply, but that inevitably changed my relationship to the space itself. I moved from small studies to large-scale portraits of my kitchen, my family, and my partner, working to learn how shape and line can coexist in a single piece, and how the inclusion or exclusion of a figure changes the relationship to a scene. Every artwork is an opportunity to create a unique formal expression while maintaining cohesive imagery — a body of work in which each piece also stands alone within its particular colour world.

As I have begun to turn my eye outwards into other environments, I aim to pursue any space with the same depth and observation I give to the most intimate corners of my home. I take ownership of each image I create, as though it is fully mine to drop into my colour language and formal style. Mashing together curated moments with the spontaneous, I pursue the visual excitement that exists within moments of pure banality — moments that unite viewers in the common language of our simple shared existence.

Born in Seattle in 1995, Sonja Haroldson lives and works in New York City. She graduated from NYU in 2017 with a BFA in Studio Art, and went on to spend two years in the Trowbridge Atelier program at Gage Academy of Art. Her drawings and paintings have been shown in group exhibitions across the country, including The Other Art Fair, Prince Street Gallery and BWAC Gallery in New York; Equinox Studios, Fountainhead Gallery and Boxx Gallery in Washington; and Wright State University in Ohio. She was one of six Artists in Residence at Weir Farm National Historical Park, and has painted in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Copyist Program.