Innumerable influences and experiences find delicate, sensitive expression in Sonia Ferrari’s works on paper and canvas. The Argentinean artist’s parents owned and operated a movie theater, she was a successful model who later ran a modeling agency, and her total devotion to painting and sculpture has fused and developed these and other aesthetic sensibilities. Her work often portrays still lives, nudes, portraits and landscapes in a sparse, expressionist style, with the occasional abstraction suggesting an elemental struggle between order and chaos. Indeed, even Ferrari’s black and white portraits convey similarly tenuous boundaries between interior and exterior, thought and façade.
Many of her works feature inklings of cubism in their foregrounding of strong lines and geometric shapes, while paintings dominated by one bold color bring to mind Henri Matisse. Nevertheless, her gentle, intimate artworks reveal vulnerable places and faces, evoking immediate identification in the viewer. Drawing on her knowledge of bodies, forms and framing, Ferrari invites us into a rapport with her subjects.
In my life, Painting means passion, freedom, pleasure and sharing. Whenever I paint I try to follow my instincts and desires. I let myself flow so the best of me appears while listening to gospels, celtic music or, just nature – my music at home. Acrylic and oil on canvas are my allies. Following the expressionistic style, strong red, orange and yellow, deep violet and blue, with a touch of pure white convey inner feelings and mixed emotions such as the human struggle to find balance in this chaotic world; or the effect of our cultural legacies which inevitably choke us sometimes in our existence.
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