Soft, Blended Brush Marks: Art by Bonnie Laird
Copper Glow, oil on wood panel
Bonnie Laird is a painter based in Victoria, British Columbia. The artist creates works of portraiture, landscape painting, and still-life using soft, blended brush marks with a subdued color palette – particularly in her human figures.
Portrait of a Worker, oil on board
Speaking to Bonnie’s subdued color choices, many of the artist’s portraits are almost sepia-toned, giving the viewer the impression of looking at an old photograph. Her Workers series, which we explored in our previous feature of Bonnie’s hazy figurative paintings, have a particularly antique sort of aesthetic to them, both in the painting style, and in the clothing of the figures.
I’m really interested in Bonnie’s Bloom series, and Cloud/Ocean/Sky series – each selection of paintings seems pleasantly adherent to a very cohesive color scheme – in Bloom, tints and shades of red form luscious, painterly bouquets of roses and other florals. In combination with dark backgrounds, these saturated colors add an air of intrigue and mystery. In Cloud/Ocean/Sky, the artist renders forms in a wonderfully delicate manner, with only the barest contrast between foreground and background.
