Sonja Grieve

Embodied Terrain examines the reciprocal relationship between body and landscape, dissolving the distinction between the two. Developed from observational drawings of the live figure, each painting undergoes an intuitive process of accumulation, excavation and revision in which representation gradually gives way to a more fluid spatial language.

The figure is neither subject nor motif, but a generative structure through which the landscape is constructed. Forms surface, fragment and recede, occupying an ambiguous territory where corporeal and geological rhythms converge. Rather than depicting place, the paintings consider landscape as an embodied experience, one shaped by memory, movement and perception.

Working primarily in oil, the paintings embrace uncertainty as a generative force. Layered surfaces, shifting chromatic relationships and gestural marks resist fixed readings, inviting sustained attention and multiple interpretations. The resulting works occupy a threshold between abstraction and figuration, proposing the body and the landscape not as separate entities, but as mutually constitutive forms continually engaged in processes of transformation.

Sonja Grieve is a Namibian-born oil painter based in the Western Cape, working full-time from her studio after a former career in interior design. Raised in the vast openness of Namibia and now immersed in the shifting light and landscapes of the Cape, her practice is rooted in movement — the belief that life unfolds as a continual dance. Painting predominantly in expressive, abstracted oils, she draws on memory, nature, water, and lived experience, including a recent cancer journey that deepened the emotional undercurrent of her work.

RK Contemporary Gallery, Riebeek Kasteel
Solo exhibition, Mullers Gallery, Cape Town
AITY Gallery, Franschhoek
AITY Gallery, Cape Town
Artvark Gallery, Kalk Bay
Rust en Vrede Gallery, Durbanville
Kirstenbosch National Gardens, Cape Town
Suidoosterfees, Cape Town
Louise Decor & Design, Observatory
Muse Gallery, Franschhoek
Youngblood Gallery, Cape Town
Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town