Dionne Bonner

My work focuses on telling stories about people and places, and our intricate connections to our cultural influences. Through a storytelling lens, I am interested in helping to uplift the heart of my people by illuminating the Black experience through my work and its multidimensional connection to many different cultures. Ultimately, I want my work to speak to specific local and national issues and events that will resonate with a broad range of people and within specific communities. It’s important that my art spark conversations and continued heightened awareness that leads to action regarding injustice, inequality, and the pervasive flaws within our society. Weather I'm painting a portrait, abstract or still life, capturing the essence of the subject matter is the most important thing to me. I begin each painting as an adventure and use a time-honored technique of under painting, adding color and light with multiple layers of paint. To achieve this layering effect, I use washes and blends of color, building each painting from the ground up which develops the subject matter in stages. I believe this technique helps me create luminous paintings with depth and character. My work has been exhibited in groups and solo shows throughout the state of Washington and abroad. My passion for painting started at a young age and was cultivated by a family of artists, musicians and writers. I'm a graduate of the Art Institute of Seattle and Evergreen State college, and a native of the Pacific Northwest. Early on I was influenced by a gamut of talented artists like Norman Rockwell and Claude Monet. While the vibrancy of Jacob Lawrence's work and the emotion of his pictorial tales created an interest in art history, which manifested in my first series of oil painting portraits.