Artist’s Reception – Sonia Gill: Memento Vivere / Remember to Live

Sonia Gill: Memento Vivere / Remember to Live, Artist’s Reception, Saturday, May 2nd, 1-4 pm

All are welcome, please stop by between 1 and 4 pm Saturday, May 2nd, to greet the artist, check out new work in the gallery and enjoy the light refreshments served up on our lovely deck outside (weather permitting). Look for the “ART” building at 770 West Grand Ave in Oakland with free street parking along West Grand and the neighborhood south. Also on hand will be artist, Jeff Dikio, with new paint chip collage work at Transmission in “This Must Be the Place.” See both shows at Transmission with more artwork in the Office and, while you’re in the building, check out Gearbox Gallery just downstairs.

In Memento Vivere: Remember to Live, Sonia Gill’s work invites us into a world where painting is reimagined through paper—where the brushstroke is replaced by the torn edge of a magazine fragment, and color is discovered rather than mixed.

Beginning with a photographic reference drawn from her everyday life, Gill builds her compositions piece by piece through a slow and contemplative process. Drawing from a vast archive of printed matter: pages of magazines, discarded scraps, and remnants of images once whole, she assembles hundreds of paper fragments translating the image into a new state of presence. Within this self-imposed constraint, she embarks on a rigorous and intuitive search for the exact hue, value, or texture needed to bring a scene to life.

​At its core, this body of work is an homage to the quiet, enduring moments that define human life: reading together, tending to small rituals, routine tasks and moments of reflection. In an era often marked by business and noise, Gill’s practice offers a counterpoint—a deliberate slowing down, a careful reconstruction of meaning through attention and care reminding us that life’s significance resides not in spectacle, but in the accumulation of small, luminous moments. This work is a reminder – remember to live.

Trained as a painter and influenced by mentor’s Jay DeFeo and Ron Dahl, Gill graduated with a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts, in addition to degrees from Michigan State University in French. With a robust exhibition history, she has shown extensively in the Bay Area with solo exhibitions dating over the past twenty years and inclusion in a long list of juried shows. Her work has been published in Studio Visit Magazine and 48 Hills, among other publications, and recognition in painting and watercolor with awards from the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Northern National Art Competition, Richmond Art Center and Fort Bragg Art Center.