Artist Info
Sonia Cornwall
Sonia Cornwall was a Canadian painter and rancher. Born in Kamloops, Cornwall’s mother Vivian Cowan studied at the Banff School of Fine Arts and was a friend of A.Y. Jackson, who would later be one of Cornwall’s earliest mentors. As a teen Cornwall excelled in art classes and developed an interest in theatre design. When Cornwall’s father died in 1939 Cornwall put her art career on hold to help her mother and sister take over operation of the family’s two ranches. One of these, the Onward Ranch, became a popular destination for artists such as Jackson, Takao Tanabe, and Joseph Plaskett.
In 1946 Cornwall enrolled at the Provincial Institute of Technology in Calgary to study painting but dropped out after three months. Despite not finishing the program, she continued to paint throughout her life and learned from books, radio programs, and other artists. The subject matter of Cornwall’s paintings reflected her surroundings, with major subject material being Cariboo landscapes, ranch life, decaying buildings, and First Nations subjects. Cornwall made a point of painting only what she could see, giving her viewers an honest depiction of the world around her.
Cornwall, Cowan, and Jackson created the Cariboo Art Society in 1945, one of the oldest and still active art societies in Western Canada. Cornwall later co-founded the Station House Gallery in 1981. She was inducted into the British Columbia Cowboy Hall of Fame with her husband Hugh Cornwall in 2005, and continues to be one of the few female inductees. Cornwall’s paintings are shown nationally and collected internationally.
