Sonia Lawson: Passions and Alarms

Born in the Yorkshire Dales into a family where both her mother and father were well respected painters, Lawson has developed her own idiom in paint, yet has never been afraid to embrace new forms and ciphers for her work.

This much-needed monograph traces her very personal style from the semi-abstract early paintings, moving into her vision of artist as witness: a darker period recording injustices on canvas. From this sombre palette she turned to raw pigments and a personal mythology, with rosy sculptural images of warmth and light. Currently she has returned to a form of abstraction whereby her work is ‘compressionism’ (her term), compacting the canvas with colour and meaning. Layers of paint can be read as abstracts, yet these surfaces are inscribed and scored with denizens to reveal a figurative dimension. She says ‘the result should be a “compression” like vegetation becoming coal, a tough, simple parcel packed with pent-up energy.’