Kevin Sonmor

Shallow Vanitas

2019

Canadian artist Kevin Sonmor is known for his rich and darkly atmospheric figurative works and still-life paintings. 

Born in 1959 in Lacombe, Alberta, Sonmor attended the Alberta College of Art and Design (now Alberta University of the Arts), where he studied art from 1983 to 1988. In 1986, he enrolled in the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s summer studio program. Then, in 1988, Sonmor moved to Montreal, where he studied at Concordia University, graduating with an MFA in 1991.

As a student, Sonmor was drawn to the delineation of forms and naturalistic proportions associated with Flemish painting. The influence of painters who worked in this realist style, coupled with Sonmar’s use of intense color and elements of turbulent Romanticism, is seen in such abstract paintings as Vanitas Relief (2019), 100 Portraits: The Home Guard (2019) and Location (2019). 

Throughout his career, Sonmor has exhibited his paintings in museums and galleries across the United States, Canada and Europe. His first solo exhibition was held in 1988 at the Truck Contemporary Art Gallery in Calgary, followed by subsequent solo exhibitions at the Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre in Kingston, Ontario and the Centre des arts actuels Skol in Montreal from 1990 to 1991.

Sonmor garnered extensive recognition in Canada following a retrospective of his work in 2002 to 2003 at the Mendel Art Gallery (now Remai Modern) in Saskatoon, the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario and a solo exhibition in 2004 at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. During the 2010s, Sonmor exhibited with several fellow Canadian artists, including James Lahey, Ed Bartram and France Jodoin.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of Kevin Sonmor paintings.