There is art you simply look at, and there is art you feel. Sonia
Scalabrin’s watercolors belong to the second kind. To look at
them isn’t just an act of viewing — it’s an invitation to step inside
a world where color holds memory and water has a soul. For the
Amazon Special Edition of ArtNow Report, we dove into the
creative process of this artist who doesn’t paint the forest so
much as she converses with it, speaking a language of silence,
flow, and deep tones.
Sonia’s relationship with art spans over four decades, shaped by
a sensitivity to color that goes beyond representation. But it was
her encounter with the Amazon that gave her work a more
visceral, sacred dimension. When asked about the color of the
Amazon’s soul, she doesn’t name a shade, but an essence: “A
green that rises from the depths, blending with dark, silent
waters, pulsing between light and shadow — a living, dense
green, full of mystery and life.”
This perception reveals the heart of her work: art as a portal to
the unseen. In her hands, watercolor — a medium that
demands surrender and acceptance — becomes the perfect
way to translate a nature that refuses to be tamed. Water, the
soul of the technique, becomes spiritually linked to the rivers of
the forest. “In watercolor, water is the essence that guides and
carries emotion through pigment,” Sonia reflects. “Just like the
rivers in the rainforest, flowing freely, carrying life, opening
invisible paths, and connecting everything around them with
gentleness, strength, and mystery.” Each brushstroke becomes
an act of communion with this sacred current.
Her training in art therapy gives Sonia a way of seeing beyond
the landscape. To her, the Amazon is at once a source of
healing and a being that cries out for care. This duality pulses
through her work. When she paints a jaguar, for example, she
seeks not just an image, but a presence: “In the fluidity of water,
the jaguar isn’t tamed. It slowly emerges — proud, beautiful —
radiating a stunning sense of strength and power.” It is an act of
listening, of translating silence and strength into pigment and
water.
And that silence is one of the greatest lessons the forest has
given her. Not an absence, but “a deep presence,” alive with
subtle sounds that become rhythm in the gestures of her brush.
The rustling of leaves becomes a light stroke; the movement of
the wind, a flowing stain; the birdsong, a soft vibration of color.