To make the abstract (which is around 24″ x 36″), my rule of thumb is to do my best to make the colors and shapes somehow “fit” organically without giving in to the desire to make the shapes and forms “representational,” I inevitably will see things that resemble objects or familiar images. Some of those I may allow to stay in the final depending on how they work together with the rest of the piece.
Chris Bonno’s development as an artist has paralleled his work as an improviser, actor and comedian. With the art work being ongoing, his career as a performer has consisted of numerous appearances on tv shows and films as well as years featuring as a standing up comedian in clubs in New York, Vegas, Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles and Canada.
Playing with shapes and colors, Bonno chuckles when he explains to Janice Bremec Blum that he loves the “f…k it factor.” Basically, that means going mad in his own world and giving himself permission to be loose. That freeing spirit is found in all of Bonno’s work. “I don’t leave a painting until I believe in it” he says, “until it impresses me.”
My country’s doormat
reads: SORRY, NO VACANCIES
Cheap apology.
I want it to read:
YOU’RE WELCOME HERE, DO COME IN
Make yourself at home.
I would be up late, take a break from painting and then brainstorm. Situations for tomatoes, odd places you might not find them, personifying events with tomatoes… what painting would be next?
Then an idea would make me laugh and I would suss it out to see if I thought it was a strong laugh… then run inside, sketch and plan it out or paint it.
Arch in California’s Alabama Hills with Mount Whitney (the highest peak in the US outside of Alaska) in the background.
