Ballard student takes on the 30 Day Art Challenge

Ballardite Sonja Haroldson, a junior at The Bush School, is a local artist with 30 new works under her belt. She recently accepted the 30 Day Art Challenge to create an original piece of art everyday for 30 days.

One of Sonja Haroldson’s favorite paintings.

“Although I have been drawing and doing art projects for a long time, I really had not done more than three real paintings, and one of them was unfinished,” Haroldson says. “I figured, when we by chance came across a flyer for 30 Day Art Challenge, that it was a great opportunity to get more experience as a painter.”

She picked a theme to focus on and ran with it. “My theme was shoes,” she says. “The reason that I picked shoes as my theme was because I wanted the paintings to work together as a whole, while still being strong as individuals. Shoes are something that vary from person to person, whether it is the style or the number of holes and rips they have in them.”

Haroldson is a busy student involved in other extra-curricular activities. She says this project taught her more than just painting. “I discovered a lot about time management, and how my stress level affected my paintings,” she tells us. “The days I was most stressed were the days that I would paint my favorite paintings, because painting was more like a break than something I had to do.”

All of Haroldson’s paintings will be on display and for sale, along with other particitpants’ work, at TK Gallery (115 Prefontaine Pl. S.) on Thursday, December 1 as part of Pioneer Square’s First Thursday Art Walk.