SONYA LUCAS 

A Little About Me:

Before I came back to West Virginia, I’d already wandered through a patchwork of places—Alabama, Wyoming, North Carolina, Virginia—each leaving its own mark. At twelve, I returned and lived for a while with my grandmother. On Sunday mornings, I’d sit beside her in church drawing little birds and boxes making her bookmarks for her bible—quiet acts that would go on to shape my Appalachian Gothic expressionist painting style. The textures, the light, the layered silences still live in my work.

 

Later, I moved in with my dad and helped raise my little brother, living “up the holler”, as we say. It was a stretch of years that taught me resilience, but also made it clear I needed to carve a different path. At seventeen, I left. My high school science teacher took me in, and her family formally adopted me. That act of kindness changed everything. Through her, I met a retired lawyer and his wife Stan and Virginia Hostler - who helped connect kids from rural areas to college—mostly pre-law or pre-med. But they made space for me, an artist, and helped open the doors to West Virginia University.

 

From there, I went on to earn a master’s degree in Art and Technology (Multimedia) from The Ohio State University, where I later taught courses blending design, storytelling, and digital media. That foundation launched me into a career focused on instructional design, multimedia production, and adult learning—crafting experiences that teach, inspire, and connect. These days, I lead the development of educational content and corporate training solutions, but painting remains the quiet through-line—my way of staying grounded in the story beneath it all.

My Art:

 

Art, for me, is storytelling. It’s where I process memory, mood, and meaning. It’s catharsis. I make work about what’s buried, what’s tender, what’s survived. My brush chases the beauty inside contradiction—the haunting and the healing, side by side.