“Think as little as possible, capture the moment as pure and unfiltered as I can” – no pause until the piece is finished. This is the artistic ideal state of Sophia Schönberner, 23. That’s why planning and structure have no place in her projects; they are snapshots made of acrylic paint and oil pastel. Everything that concerns you at the moment flows into the creation process.
Sophia recently got a studio. It is part of vacant office space that was not rented and was therefore converted for artists. Now she has space to work in large formats, no longer limited by the size of her room where most of her paintings were created. A colorful palette of dust and oil pastels is never missing, “an elementary part of my art,” says Sophia.
Sophia spontaneously chooses the medium for her thoughts: painting on fabric, crocheting, photography or digital collages and large letters? Most of the time it is paper, always at hand. She places too high demands on canvases: “Planning has always been a waste of time for me; I had to get used to it during my studies.” Sophia has been studying at the Academy of Fashion & Design in Munich since October.
A series of pictures by Sophia were taken last summer, on the ground in front of her grandma’s house in Spain, “grounded,” as she says. “There was always something going on around me: people talking to me as I passed, my sister watching and telling me something.” Several large sheets of paper create a large work as if made of mosaic pieces, held together by acrylic paint.
The works from Spain were most recently on display in the exhibition “New Romanticism 3.0” at the Kulturkorridor Foundation in Aachen. “That was a special feeling,” says Sophia about the second exhibition of her art. “It’s not easy to assert yourself in the art world. You have to be persistent, but you also need luck.”
Sophia describes herself as sensitive, “moved by many things.” Crying eyes are a recurring motif. Upheavals in her own life, in her family, are a constant in her biography and provide material. This personal level is important for Sophia: “If someone walks past it and sees a part of themselves, even if it’s just a feeling – then I have achieved something.”