issa me!

Hi! Nice to meet you. I'm Sonja, aka Sonja the Grey.

After completing an art class in college, I threw down the stack of drawings I had from class and said, "this is stupid, I hate this, what is the point? What am I supposed to do with this stack of drawings?"

It only took me 30 more years to figure out what I meant in that moment (good thing life is long and goes really slow).

I have come to understand that I want my creations to have a purpose. That miiight mean that it holds pencils or is used in spellwork, but that still doesn't fully explain it.

I want the things I make to tell a story.

I'm always telling stories, it's the human thing to do, right? "Storyteller" is all over my astrology, too, lol. Sometimes I'm shouting into the void, but I generally hope I can reach people.

So if my art doesn't feel like it has a story, I hate it.

It's a struggle I've had with my art for my entire life. "What am I supposed to do with this" during that first college year was really, "These turned out okay, maybe even I like what the medium is doing, but this has no story and is therefore stupid." (Teenagers. Le sigh.)

So recently (very, very recently) I asked myself how to make all of my art have a story. How does the abstract mountain combine with the polished stick of wood combine with the story about a magic apocalypse? This question stressed me out for a bit, until I understood that all of my art - and writing - wants to come from the same "world." Then the sticks and skulls aren't just sticks, they're totems used by the magicians working with the Breach. The abstract paintings are from the Purple World (more on that in a moment). The Tower is somewhere in the world, and I don't know what it means yet. etc etc.

I don't know if it's one world or more. I create most things intuitively, including the writing. I'm a pantser, not a plotter (though I prefer "discovery writer," fewer traumatic memories), so I don't know how it's all going to roll together yet. This is a brand new approach. No panic. 😅

I do know that the current writing, The Unraveling, is "before." I don't know how long before, but it serves as a prologue in my mind to the world or worlds that are evolving.

On the art side, there are two persistent images in my mind. One is a Tower. I think it's a combination of the Tower tarot card and the Dark Tower from Stephen King ... or at least, somewhat, anyway. I named Jake in honor of the series.

The tower is coming apart. Magic exits from the door, swirls around, and lifts away pieces of the tower from the top. Those pieces aren't falling, though - they rise up with the smoke, disappearing into the sky. It feels freeing, not scary. It also might be that the tower chunks are turning into birds in the distance, that's hard to tell.

I've painted this a couple times already, but haven't landed the look I want from it yet. I feel there are a few more versions yet to be created.

There's also a puffy purple world, which will be "interesting" to explore since I don't really do "cute" usually. Hopefully it'll have some teeth. (Metaphorically? Please??) I think it does have teeth. It feels like there is a lot of between in this Purple World - like the tower is at one end, and the puffy, cloud-like purple extreme is at the other end, and all kinds of mix in between.

Teal is a color that keeps showing up, too, without me planning it. Sometimes blue, but ... teal. It's got something going on that I don't know yet.

Why this, why now? I went from tech and management, to a spiritual "awakening" (ugh, lol), to art. And y'know, I'm old. I'm tired, sure, but I think it's more about shifting into a new mindset in these fabulous perimenopausal years. I love giving intuitive readings or exploring someone's chart with them. Those are some of the most powerful conversations I've had in my life, and I expect there will be more.

But there's a bard in me that wants a chance to speak, so now I'm giving "him" (I don't make the rules) room to breathe to see what comes of it.

I hope my work is evocative. I hope they feel something, that it triggers self-reflection somewhere along the way, especially if they have a chance to engage with more than one thing (because story). And I also want there to be a glimmer of hope. Hope is hard sometimes. Sometimes all the time. But maybe, hopefully, it'll be there for them, just a little more because of my work. I would love that.