Next Big Thing: Sojourner Truth Parsons
The artist creates works that are intimate and charged with a range of energies and emotions
Saturated colors fill the paintings of Sojourner Truth Parsons. Amid these abstract patches of hue, the artist adds glimpses of flowers and figures, particularly forms suggestive of the female body. Based in Brooklyn and New York’s Catskill Mountains, she creates works that are intimate and charged with a range of energies and emotions: desire, happiness, sadness, renewal. Selections are on view through February 28, 2026, in “Louise,” her first major survey, at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver.
Bold outlook: Her artistic drive stems from a visceral response to interactions. “I hope the viewer can understand the energy that we can be moved by and learn from when we are physically with the work,” she says.
Independent streak: “From a young age, I was deeply taken with the idea of being free,” she says. “To me, an artist was free. I didn’t really connect it with producing so much as a way of moving through the world.”
“Sojourner is a deeply poetic and felt painter, whose works hold a rigorous logic of their own making that is both profound and striking.”
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Winter issue under the headline “Next Big Things.” Subscribe to the magazine.