Sofia Minson
Encyclopedia
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
oil painter of Māori (Ngati Porou
Ngati Porou
Ngāti Porou is a Māori iwi traditionally located in the East Cape and Gisborne regions of the North Island of New Zealand. Ngāti Porou has the second-largest affiliation of any iwi in New Zealand, with 71,910 registered members in 2006...
), Swedish, English and Irish descent. She was born in Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
, New Zealand and spent her childhood living in Samoa
Samoa
Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...
, New Zealand, China and Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
due to her father's engineering project management work. Minson's large, finely detailed oil paintings explore the land, myths and people of Aotearoa
Aotearoa
Aotearoa is the most widely known and accepted Māori name for New Zealand. It is used by both Māori and non-Māori, and is becoming increasingly widespread in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.-Translation:The...
(New Zealand). She also celebrates Asian, Pacific, Western and African cultural diversity through portraiture. Her landscape and portrait work maintain a smooth style combining aspects of realism
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
and surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
.
In 2005, Minson won first prize in two New Zealand art awards - the Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Award with her piece entitled Saffron Monk and the Auckland East Arts Council Art Competition. She graduated with a B.Des.
Bachelor of Design
A Bachelor of Design degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts three or four years. It is an arts-centered degree that is a counterpart to the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree...
degree in Spatial Design from Auckland University of Technology
Auckland University of Technology
The Auckland University of Technology is a university in New Zealand. It was formed on 1 January 2000 when the Auckland Institute of Technology was granted university status. Its primary campus is on Wellesley Street in Auckland's Central business district...
in 2006. In 2010 Minson won the ART Auckland Awards and was a two-time finalist in the Adam Portraiture Award, first in 2008 with her mystical landscape/portrait painting From Hikurangi to Hibernia and second in 2010 with her surreal self-portrait Effulgent Self.
She has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand from 2004 onwards and in 2006 was invited to show her works at the museum at Estense Castle
Castello Estense
The Castle Estense or Castle of Saint Michele is a moated medieval structure in the center of Ferrara, northern Italy. It is a large block with four corner towers.- History :...
, Ferrara, Italy
Ferrara
Ferrara is a city and comune in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara. It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north...
and at Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York
Chelsea, Manhattan
Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The district's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, 30th Street to the north, the western boundary of the Ladies' Mile Historic District – which lies between the Avenue of the Americas and...
. Minson's first solo exhibition entitled "Te Here Tangata - The Rope of Mankind" was held in Auckland in October 2007 and featured 14 large-scale portraits and landscapes referencing her mixed heritage and Maori myths. The artist subsequently had solo exhibitions at the Gallery Helena Bay Hill in Northland, Erenus Art Gallery in Ankara, Turkey, Toi o Tahuna Gallery in Queenstown, McCarthy Gallery in Auckland and Red Spot Gallery in Rotorua.
In September 2010 Sofia judged the North Shore City Art Awards alongside art advisor, curator and author Liz Caughey and sculptor Jeff Thompson.
Minson and five other New Zealand artists were chosen for a collaborative arts project that was filmed for a 1-hour feature documentary called Canvassing the Treaty, which aired on Maori TV on Waitangi Day 2010.