You’ve spoken about how your own healing and art has been entwined at some of the hardest times in your life. Is it Country, community, memory or the act of creating that heals? 

It’s being back on country that heals and the memories growing up out in the bush with my family.

You have a unique process, painting your feelings and sometimes waiting for a painting to come to you. How does that work?

The feeling is always there. I’ve just got this gift that I can feel it, and I paint that feeling. I don't draw anything, I just paint straight on the canvas . When I have that feeling, I wake up in the morning and I just start painting it and then it flows from there. 

If I'm working on one big painting, sometimes I can paint it everyday but then I stop to have a break . I've got to wait for a couple of days just to get that feeling back. When the feeling comes again, I go back to painting again.

What’s your process when it comes to creating an artwork?

I can see the colour in my mind. With the colours I have visualised I just go from there. I’ll add a bit of colour with the other colours and if I like it and it matches, I’ll go with that.

I’ve done paintings, sketching, charcoal, pastels, pottery, ceramics, jewellery, textiles everything. I’m very artistic, you can do anything when you have my gifted talent.

You capture many moments of renewal and rebirth in your work, after strong rains and wildflowers breaking through. Why do those moments speak to you so strongly?

It's a new beginning. It’s meaningful, and I hope it gives people their own personal healing for themselves, and for the stuff that they've been through. 

The rain is cleansing. It cleanses you, and then it flows into the river and washes it down the stream as the river flows.

The Gascoyne River floodwaters started running recently.

When there’s running water, like many rivers, you can cleanse yourself in the water, and it washes away down the stream. All the negative energy washes away, creating a new beginning. 

You first came to Japingka and showed them your work in 2018. What has the journey been like since then? 

It opened a new doorway for me in the art world. I came to Japingka, and it opened the doorway to where I am today.

I just love art. It's my passion, it's what I do, it's who I am. Everyone knows me as an artist and as the painter.

How did you start painting?

I’ve always painted. Most of my life. I’ve been painting since I was a kid, so for a very long time. 

I'm a self-taught artist.

When I was growing up as a kid, it was my dream to be like this. To be known for my art. This was my vision.

As you grow up, you go through all that stuff in life and I just kept painting throughout. That was my way of being away from everyone, focusing on my work.

Has how you paint or what you paint changed a lot in that time?

Yes it did.

I’m older and wiser now the way I create these paintings.

What would you want people who are discovering your work for the first time to know?

The paintings speak for themselves. When people walk into the room and see all my work, it moves them. They feel my feeling coming off the painting, and that’s how they get connected to one certain painting.

View

Sonya Edney - Healing Through Country (2026)
Sonya Edney - Burringurrah Dreaming (2024)
SBS On Demand, Our Stories, Session 6, Episode 2.
Sonya Edney- Yingarrda Waterholes and Wildflowers (2023)
Sonya Edney – Recent Paintings (2022)
Sonya Edney – Gascoyne Night Skies (2021)
My Journey through Ingarrda Country (2019)

Read

The Rising Star of Sonya Edney - Artist Profile
A Walk Through of Sonya’s Edney’s First Solo Show 2019
Sonya Edney Solo Exhibition Walk Through 2022
Sonya Edney & The Beginning of Something Bigger (2024)