Spring 2012, Volume 12

Art by Peter Bonner


Artist Statement: I make work with primordial intentions, working instinctively with the goal of knowing experience. I use a process that leaves the possibility of achieving an image open and uncertain. I rely on my body and its wisdom, for example, I lay my surfaces flat when I work, often sitting with the work on the floor, attempting to discipline myself to remain in the moment, attentive to what is happening on the surface. What come’s takes many forms, from remembered moments experienced to particular light conditions, familiar shapes and forms or a spatial feeling that I know. Characters form relationships and narratives between these develop. Specificity is the degree of intimacy I am able to achieve with the remembered experience, whether I am able to be at one with it, knowing it and make it live again through paint.

 

Read Peter's essay, Strange Shapes, which discribes his visit to an old Russian Orthodox Monastery in the town of Sergiyev Posad that houses a treasure of fifteen century icons painted by Andre Rublyov.

 

BIO: Peter Bonner was born in Australia and has lived in a variety of countries in both hemispheres. He studied painting and drawing in London, New York and Melbourne and in 2010 completed a research degree investigating his interest in perception and the primitive. He currently spends his time in the deserts of central Australia and the American west as well as in his studio in Brooklyn.