Sonya Edney is a largely self-taught Yinggarda Wadjarri artist born in 1974 in Carnarvon in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. Sonya started painting at home at Burringurrah Community, located between the towns of Carnarvon and Meekatharra, where she grew up and attended school of the air. Later she began a Visual Arts course at Carnarvon TAFE and was approached to teach her skills in the local schools for NAIDOC week. Sonya’s father, Ernest Edney (dec.), who was a dogger, was also a musician and Sonya, too, plays musical instruments. She attributes her artistic talents to her family.

Sonya says “Painting inspires me, when I think about home. When I travel and see different country and different scenery, that makes me think about my own country. It takes me back home to where all my inspiration first started out in the bush with my family. Living out in the bush was all about learning where you come from and the stories you were told.”

Sonya has worked in a wide range of mediums from drawing and painting to mosaics, mural painting, basket weaving and silkscreen printing, as well as being involved in the illustrations for Irra Wangga Language Programs. She has travelled widely in Western Australia and has worked at art centres in Geraldton, Carnarvon, and Port Hedland.

Her current interests are in painting the country of the Upper Gascoyne and out towards Mt Augustus. “It’s red sand and spinifex country and in springtime there are everlastings and other wildflowers and the creeks are running. A lot of stories I’ve got in my head, so it’s good to paint one theme.”

Once I’ve got the colours organised in my mind, the rest just follows along. It takes a while to get all the background colours done and then it goes from there. I wait, maybe overnight, until the rest of the painting comes to me. Sometimes it is in a dream. Then I start with a colour, then I add some other tints to it to make it darker or lighter, to create movement and to tell the story.” Sonya adds, “The more I paint, the more stories come into my mind that I want to paint, stories from when I was growing up. One story brings back another. It’s an ongoing and compelling process.”

Sonya is currently living in Perth and paints at her home. Over the last five years she has had family and friends that have passed. She says: “Sometimes when I’m painting, with the grief I’ve had, the painting helps me get through it. I came to Perth in 2018 and approached Japingka Gallery with one painting. It opened a new doorway for me, and I have become wiser, and more creative throughout my journey.”

In early October 2020, Sonya went to the Pilbara and Upper Gascoyne for two weeks with a group led by Peter Salmon, who wanted to go back to his Warrinyangga country with his children and grandchildren. His main purpose was to re-enliven his ancestral language, as he is its last living speaker, and pass it down his family line in the hope of preserving it. The trip was reinvigorating for Sonya, too, and a re-connection to her country as they travelled through and stopped at a number of the places where she had lived with her family as a child. Since Sonya has been painting with Japingka, her iconic artworks have found a local, national and international audience, finding distant homes in the USA, Europe and Ireland. From 2020 Sonya has had two paintings in the inaugural exhibition at the new Western Australian Museum, Boola Bardip.

Text courtesy of Japingka Gallery.