"the most beautiful story and art in one."
— Postprandial Magazine
"Working mainly with paints, and cold wax, their two different styles combine to create expressionist portrait paintings. Their works express the balance between reality and distortion to evoke human emotion and vulnerability."
Sonny and Lisa Moeckel are a married artist duo who collaborate simultaneously on the same canvas using acrylic paint AND MIXED MEDIA by combining their abstract and realistic styles to create expressionist paintings. Their unique collaborations evoke human emotions and vulnerability through painterly lines and vivid colors. THEY allow the painterly lines to show through in our work to display THEIR process. Each layer takes weeks, and often months to dry. It can take years for one painting to reach completion.
Spokane, Washington has been home for Lisa her whole life. On her own, Lisa has mainly focused on realism drawings, specifically portraiture. She has only expanded into painting in collaborations with Sonny.
Born and raised on the Navajo reservation, Sonny (Jicarilla Apache and Navajo), had his first painting featured in The Heard Art Museum in Phoenix, Arizona at the age of 13.
Their two different styles combine to create abstract expressionist paintings.
With Sonny being an Indigenous artist, culture has inspired many of their works and they hope to remind people of the importance of Indigenous people, and the struggles they have had to overcome, both in the past and present. They want the viewer to experience the spirit of the Indigenous people and the importance of working together.
Chief Velarde was their first collaboration inspired by Sonny's Great Grandfather. This work was one of the paintings on display at their solo exhibition at the Lied Center for the Visual Arts at Whitworth University in 2017.
Shortly after, in 2017 the artist duo was selected by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in the juried finals of the Art on the Green in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a prominent organization dedicated to promoting excellence in the profession of fine art.
Sonny and Lisa were awarded first place in the NNDF juried art show and People’s Choice Award, 2019. The artist duo were finalists in the 2021 Spokane Arts Awards in the category of “collaboration” and more recently winner of the the USDA/NRCS American Indian Art Contest in November 2023. THEY WERE ALSO NOMINATED IN 2025 FOR BY SPOKANE ARTS IN THE CATEGORY OF “aRTS ADVOCACY” FOR THEIR WORK IN THE COMMUNITY AND WITH THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE.
