Sophia Parun

Iwi:  Kāi Tahu, Croatian

Toi:  Ringa Toi

Kaupapa:

Sophia Parun is a rural Horowhenua-based artist and textile designer. Having always had a wild imagination as a child, her strong sense of creativity led her to study a Bachelor of Design, majoring in Textiles. She further refined her craft and applied her creative expression to textiles and painting. She has since become a flamboyant painter, known for her contemporary, colourful, bold, and abstract art.

Her practice traverses between tangible and intangible realms, often guided by what she describes as Kēhua, which manifest within her paintings. These ‘supernatural forces’ inform her process, resulting in each paintstroke and marking expressing the entities she encounters, often appearing as abstract, vibrant, and fluid figures.

Her painting titled ‘Ivory Throne’ is a part of her ‘Epic Prodigy’ series, an ongoing project that intertwines emotion, fantasy, and the natural world. In her own words, “Supernatural feelings and forces translated into fantasy animals, characters, creatures, and inter-dimensional beings.”