Sonya Fairbanks

Sonya Fairbanks was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She began her education at the University of California, Irvine and completed her B.A. in Studio Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1988. She graduated cum laude and with 'distinction in the major' for completing a graduate level project as an undergraduate. In the following years, she focused on a narrative style, using varied mediums: color photography, printmaking and bookmaking. At that time, Fairbanks also served on the Board of the California Society of Printmakers.

In 1994 she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where she would spend the next ten years. The sparse beauty of the desert landscape encouraged her turn toward representing the quiet life of nature, by painting still life in pastel.

In 1999 she was admitted into the Pastel Society of America in New York City. Her work has been the subject of numerous feature articles, including American Artist Magazine in August 2001, and Southwest Art Magazine in 2005. The art and life of Fairbanks were also included in the documentary film American Waitress , premiering in 2002 at the Santa Fe Film Festival and airing on The Sundance Channel November 2003.

Sonya Fairbanks' work is represented in collections, both private and corporate, throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. She is represented by The Easton Gallery in Santa Barbara, CA, by Munson-Meyer Gallery in NM and in Scottsdale, AZ by Victoria Boyce Gallery.

Coming full circle, Sonya Fairbanks has returned to her birthplace of Santa Barbara, where she resides in the wine country with her husband Bill and their Italian Greyhound "Spike". In addition to art and art history, other passions include travel, hiking, bicycling, poetry, yoga, mysticism and feasting.

I was born in Santa Barbara, California and grew up in a family that considered hiking in the Santa Barbara backcountry and taking long beach walks its own form of worship. I learned early on that my joy was to be found in the details of nature. Often I would lag behind the rest of the family, poking blades of grass down gopher holes, collecting beautiful seed pods or watching the sea anemone close softly when a rush of water entered the tidal pool.

These memory vignettes formed the beginnings of my interest in still life. For the past ten years I have chosen mostly fruits and vegetables as my homage to the details so often overlooked in our fast-paced world: simple abundance, daily routines and rituals, sustenance from Earth.

While I am painting, my goal is to slow down and explore every subtlety of color, form, and the interrelations between subjects and space. Each piece becomes a meditation for me. It is my hope that this mindfulness will find expression in the completed work and become an occasion for the viewer's deeper appreciation of nature.

I also enjoy including metal and glass in my still lifes to distort or dramatize familiar subjects and make reference to the sacred and mysterious elements of the world around us.