Curator's Choice: Jane Sellars on Sonia Lawson's Paintings, Passions and Alarms at the Mercer Art Gallery

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Jane Sellars, of the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, on the inspirations of Royal Academician Sonia Lawson

“In terms of picking out certain pieces, that would be like asking a parent to pick a favourite child. Thinking about this retrospective, I find it engaging, disturbing, worrying and entertaining.

I particularly love the paintings that Sonia was inspired to create by a visit she made to the Brontë Parsonage museum in 1981 with her mother, Muriel, and daughter, Zoe.

Sonia had, of course, been to the Haworth before in her childhood, but here she is in her 50s being bowled over by the Brontës and filling huge canvass with these extraordinary figures emerging from the darkness. Moorland Benediction is about dreaming, night time vigils, and writing, reading and praying in the dark.

Sonia’s mother, the artist Muriel Metcalfe, had a habit of reading, writing and drawing at night time, just as the Brontë sisters were reputed to have done, getting the most creativity that they could squeeze  out of their  day.

In Portrait of my Mother, Muriel is ensconced in a luxurious bed, completely absorbed in her work. There is a sense in her work that Sonia, like her mother, fought constantly to find that quiet time of concentration.

The exhibition charts the essential relationship between Lawson’s work and her life experience, from the 1950s to the present.

Her passion for painting coincided with maternal love, literary sensibilities and a powerful sense of political justice.

She explored various media, but it is her large-scale oils on canvas, the big subject pieces, that soar with her powers as a painter.”

• Sonia Lawson RA: Paintings, Passions and Alarms is at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate from November 14 2015 – February 7 2016.

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Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting-and-drawing/art540491-jane-sellars-sonia-lawson-mercer-art-gallery-harrogate