Irmina SONI (pseud. b. 1974), Santorini, 2025

oil pastels, cardboard, 21 x 29.7 cm, signed on the back

IRMINA SONI - b. 1974
Painter, poet who creates coherent works with universal overtones and at the same time deeply personal, anchored in the artist's life experiences. In the privacy of her studio, she creates contemporary transcendent paintings, with which the author transports viewers into the recesses of her rich spirituality.

Poetic-visual projects are created as cycles of works over several years of penetrating the subject and include from a dozen to several hundred creative records. Quite often, the leaven for further non-verbal actions is a word, a quote, her own poem or a profound effect on the artist of an image she has seen - this happened in the case of Santorini. The sights and backstreets of the town of Oia made such an impression on Irmina Soni that the creative compulsion on the subject bore fruit two years after the visit to the island, and will be the substrate of the cyc for years to come. Usually the artist works on at least two projects in parallel.

The artistic sensitivity in the child was first noticed by her parents. They guided their daughter, so that she is a graduate of the Institute of Art and Plastic Culture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zielona Gora, where in 1997 she defended her master's degree in the drawing studio. The following years were associated with the creation of a family. The growing paucity of creative activity turned into increased expression in this area. In order to refresh and develop her painting technique, the artist again entered the thresholds of the art academy, this time at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, defending her second master's degree - in painting - in 2024.
The last eight years have seen the creation of the series "Cellist" - describing the physical and spiritual beauty of the artist's daughter, consisting of more than twenty oil paintings on canvas, shown at two differently structured solo exhibitions in Zielona Gora, and in Wroclaw.
"Self-portrait with veil" - a very wide artistic register of all the author's emotional states, includes plaster masks of Irmina's face, as well as more than two hundred small formats made with oil pastels on cardboard and tracing paper, some using a mixed technique of oil pastels and dry pastels, a prop-skin, a dozen life-size bodies also made with oil pastels on cardboard, about twenty oil paintings on canvas of larger formats. This part of the oeuvre was available at three completely different solo exhibitions, in Auschwitz, and twice in Wroclaw.
"Equilibrium," "Road Home," "Peace," and " Beempekk" are more modest in number cycles made on cardboard with oil pastels. The painter's favorite format of 100x70cm prevails.


The subjects are usually presented abstractly, although they are always derived from life experiences or related to the artist's own current needs.

2021 - solo exhibition in Zielona Gora, Where do we come from, who are we, where are we going - does anyone know yet?
2022 - individual exhibition in Wroclaw, Cello player
2022 - solo exhibition in Oswiecim, Self-portrait with veil
2023 - individual exhibition in Wroclaw, Self-portrait with veil
2024 - individual exhibition in Wroclaw, Self-portrait with a veil