Sonja Krastman

Quorum Gallery Resident Artist

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(310) 717-1484

About

California native Sonja Krastman grew up taking family trips to Joshua Tree. Today she divides her time between the high desert and the coast, and the light, space and texture of both landscapes shape her encaustic, acrylic and mixed media paintings.

Sonja wants to bring the viewer inside the feeling of a place or a moment, rather than simply describing it. She lets the process of making marks guide each piece and welcomes the unexpected, so her work moves freely between representation and abstraction. She builds her paintings in layers, fusing wax and damar resin or stacking up quick-drying acrylic, much the way life’s events build on one another. “I thrive on creating visually a mystery that cannot be expressed in words,” she says.

She is a juried permanent artist at Quorum Gallery in Laguna Beach. She won first prize at the 29 Palms Art Gallery members’ show and had a solo exhibition, Desert Crawl, at the same gallery. The City of Laguna Beach commissioned her to paint a 16-foot banner for its summer banner tradition, and she is featured in Katie Nartonis’s book California Desert Artists. Her work is in collections across California and in New York, Chicago and Portugal.

She studied at UC Berkeley (BA), Gonzaga University (MA), Parsons School of Design and CSU Long Beach.

Open for commissions.