Sonia Gill

Who doesn’t love flowers? Beautiful colors and luxurious petals draped sensuously over vibrant green foliage always attract a viewer’s eye. I love them too. But, even more, I love the space between. I love the cerulean blue triangles, yellow-green ovals and/or the deep blue-black funnel shapes that those flowers create by their edges touching and then receding. In my orchard this relationship of flowers (and fruit, leaves, stems, and limbs) that I capture in my camera creates a dynamic composition that becomes a metaphor for larger concerns. A fully open blossom whose petals shelter a small and budding new bloom reminds me of a parent protecting a child. Perhaps it could represent a student seeking refuge behind a teacher during a tumultuous episode of bullying on the playground. The simple and easily accessible images of my apple and peach trees allow me to reflect on and to explore universal themes and problems.

Working from digital photographs I copy the composition almost exactly as it is printed as a small 4”x 6” photo. Whether I am working small or large I always keep my photographs small so that I have more opportunity to be inventive in my interpretation of the shapes that I see. Sometimes it is like putting together a puzzle. I am not sure of all the particulars but I know when the whole image is complete. One or two or three sketches allow me to become intimate with where I am going with the work. Using watercolor, acrylics or oil paint I recreate the photo emphasizing the lights and darks and rhythm of the shapes. Values, composition, color, contrast and texture are employed to create a unique interpretation of the moment I have captured on film. I am constantly striving to create a new and personal vocabulary in each medium. Every painting is connected to the one that preceded it but I am always searching for new solutions to the same problems. Sometimes I use old solutions for new problems. Whatever the situation I work diligently and sometimes obsessively on my orchard representations. Faithfully following the forms I create a painting that is realistically representational from afar. It also represents for me a reflection of an important problem or theme. But close up it becomes only shapes of paint. Then the spaces in between become of greater interest and it is a less literal interpretation of space. It then becomes a song of the spaces between and the abstract pattern that they create.