Biography
About the Artist
E’dna at Work
E'dna is a contemporary abstract artist whose work occupies a unique space at the intersection of Indian cultural heritage and European abstract expressionism. Born in India and based in Vienna, Austria, she creates large-format paintings that transform memories into luminous, layered abstractions.
Known by her nickname Sona — Hindi for “Gold” — Edna's artistic identity is deeply rooted in this duality. Her warm, golden palette reflects both the light of the Indian landscape and the richness of Viennese artistic tradition. Each painting is a bridge between two worlds: the vibrant chaos of Indian street life and the contemplative stillness of the European studio.
Artistic Practice
E'dna's distinctive Layer-drag technique manipulates paint across large canvases with precision and emotion. She begins each painting with photographic references from her extensive travels. Each image transforms through successive layers of paint, where colors blur, layer, and dissolve into one another, creating a visual experience that mirrors the way memory itself functions.
The result is a body of work that hovers between figuration and abstraction, between memory and dream. Recognizable forms — a figure, a building, a landscape — emerge and dissolve within the paint, creating a visual experience that mirrors the way memory itself functions: fragmentary, layered, and suffused with emotion.
Thematic Series
Edna's work is organized into thematic series, each exploring a different facet of the her travel experience through the lens of abstraction:
Crowds
The kinetic energy of Indian street life, where thousands of bodies create a living tapestry of color and movement.
Citylights
Nocturnal urban landscapes where neon lights and traffic trails dissolve into pure color and rhythm.
Landscapes
The vast expanses of paddy fields to Mediterranean spring meadows, distilled into essential color bands.
Water
Reflections, fluidity, and the meditative quality of water surfaces rendered in luminous blues and greens.
Urban India
Architectural abstractions inspired by the cities of Rajasthan - the ornate facades of Rajasthani havelis.
Abstract
Pure explorations of form, color, and the Layer-drag technique, freed from representational constraints.
Artist Statement
“My paintings are acts of remembering and reproducing the India I left several decades ago and the impactful exposure of other continents through my extensive travel. I let these memories surface through the paint in my Vienna studio. The Layer-drag is my instrument of translation: it drags the image from clarity into ambiguity, from photograph into painting, from the specific into the universal.
I am interested in the moment when a recognizable scene begins to dissolve — when the crowd becomes a wave of color, when the city becomes pure light. This is where my work lives: in the space between seeing and remembering, between India and Europe, between the concrete and the abstract.”
The artist's studio in Vienna, Austria