Spotlight on the Arts: Sonny Brown

Spotlight on the Arts by The Paradise Center honors and encourages students in the arts by highlighting their talent and acknowledging the support they receive through their schools and teachers.

Sonny Brown, a fourth-grader at Dixon School, is an artist of multiple dimensions. Her talents certainly show in her creations, but her artistic depth goes well beyond her works.

She began her artistic journey at four years of age. Using pencil, charcoal, and paint, she experiences art as relaxing and fun, but she also views art as creating personal masterpieces for the artist. Her subject matter ranges from the realism of a portrait of her pet, “Zoey,” to a Christmas light that incorporates a scene, to using her imagination to create a cruise ship amid tumultuous waves on an ocean.

The specific ship she imagined and painted at home this year, she said was near California. When asked where she would like to be on the ship, she pointed to the bow, which overlooks her fantastic depiction of dramatic wave action. We discussed the water in the painting, which she described as the best use for paint – using layering and blending to create variability, color changes, dimension, and a shine or shimmer. This painting is her favorite.

She mentioned two teachers who were supportive of her work, Mrs. Phillips, her current teacher, and Mrs. Vukialau, her teacher from last year who gave her two piece of canvas paper – one she used to paint the cruise ship and the other she is saving to do something special.

When asked what advice she would give someone who had never done art before, without hesitation, she said, “ Try it, don’t give up, every time you do something it gets better!” She is looking forward to learning more about different mediums as she gets older, such as printmaking.