Undercut with Emotion: The Painting Portfolio of Bonnie Laird
When The Day Is Done, oil on board
Bonnie Laird is an oil painter who creates soft, blended images of landscapes, florals, and human figures. The artist’s works are undercut with emotion and tend to feature lone central figures on neutral or relatively unadorned backgrounds.
Woman with green background, oil on board
I really enjoy the mix of soft blending and fine detail that Bonnie achieves in her works. In many cases the artist uses larger brush marks to create the illusion of detail -- strategically-placed strokes of white in a painting of sky, for example, seem to do the heavy lifting of portraying the texture and imperfection of an entire portion of cloud. Likewise, a few simple, cleverly placed marks can build up detailed facial features in a portrait, lending a human subject an expression that draws the viewer in immediately.
In our previous feature of Bonnie’s work with soft, blended brush marks, we also looked at the artist’s use of colour. I really appreciate the way that Bonnie can shift between using deep, high-contrast, saturated hues (like in her floral pieces) to more subdued neutral tones (like in her portraits of workers). Though the effects exist at two extremes, both are powerful in their own way.
