Sonya G. Peters was born in Canada and worked as a graphic designer after completing a Diploma of Applied Arts in Illustration at Sheridan College, Ontario, before moving to Australia in 1991. Sonya has since completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with First class Honours and a Master of Visual Art at Queensland College of Art, Gold Coast, where she is now teaching. Fresh from finishing her Masters Sonya was rewarded with the Philip Bacon Recommendation prize and was shortlisted for the Stan and Maureen Duke Art Prize Gold Coast. Her work Bedroom Series, was acquired by the National Australia Private Bank Collection.  Recently was recently a Finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize. Sonya divides her time between arts-making,lecturing and raising four children on the Gold Coast. She is represented by 19KAREN Contemporary Artspace on the Gold Coast.
 
When asked about the reoccurring motif of birds throughout her works Sonia had this story to tell:
 
"I was driving along Bermuda road a few years back just around dusk when a huge fruit bat flew out from the bushes and smacked right into my window which scared me to death and the first thing that came to my mind was (and this was after I hoped that the bat was OK and survived the impact) that this is a bad omen, something bad is going to happen. A few days later my two boys were driving to work together when a car flew out of a drive way and crashed right into the side of the car Marcus and Van were driving. The car was completely written off but thank goodness the boys were OK and I can't help but relate their accident to the bat hitting my car.

When my father was diagnosed with cancer and given 6 months to live the family bird a cockatiel which was my dad's pet and who was part of the family for many many years and who was perfectly healthy died suddenly three days later my father passed away. When my mother-in-law was in hospital dying we had a tawny frog mouth come land on our balcony railing just outside the boys room and he sat there all day, with kids coming and going all around him, at dusk he flew off and the next day my mother-in-law passed away. To me these are all signs of some sort and birds have been a part of my life in some way or form. I wouldn't say that I'm superstitious but I feel that I pay attention to things and perhaps put significance to things that other people wouldn't think twice about.

Birds in myth, legends and folklore were thought to be the messengers of death or that they were the carriers of the soul once a person passed away this was the role of the crow and it happens to be that many of the birds that I find are crows. Also there is this beauty when you see a bird/birds flying through the sky they exist within this liminal space between heaven and earth yet for them to nest and die they must come back to earth back to the material world.

It was pretty much around the time that the bat flew into my car that I began to notice the "roadkill" and once I began to look the more I began to find. The birds that I found in death gave me the opportunity to really look and to observe something that is always in constant motion, and allowed me the time to draw and respond to what I was seeing; a special kind of beauty exists when life is stilled."