For Immediate Release Fenn Gallery Premieres New Orleans Landscape Artist in CT Woodbury, CT - Fenn Gallery premieres New Orleans landscape artist Melissa Bonin who will exhibit with cityscape painter Kevin Conklin. The show runs from Sept. 20th - Oct. 28th. The Artist Reception is Saturday, Sept. 22nd from 4 - 6 pm, and is open to the public. The sad, resilient character of Melissa Bonin’s Louisiana birthplace emanates from her impressionistically colored landscapes. Although also a portrait artist, Bonin prefers the freedom landscapes permit to blur the distinction between abstraction and reality. The humid and hazy light of Louisiana which creates rich color and obscures detail is Bonin’s entree to dreamy swamp and river scenes: dark, blurry images in which the indistinct trees seem to melt into their own shadows, which in turn melt into the water and sky. Inspired not by what she sees but what she feels, Bonin explains: “there is a certain time of day, just before the darkness, when the human eye has difficulty seeing and imagination steps in to fill the gaps. At this time, color is at its richest, and trees look like dark spirits waiting and walking in the distant cane fields.” Though grounded in realism, in her breast beats the heart of an action painter. Using smeary mixtures of color set against glowing expanses, she captures tree bark with long, serpentine strokes and tangled strands of moss with calligraphic curves. Bonin paints wet-on-wet. She thins her oil paints into a soupy mix which is then applied quickly onto a canvas soaked with thinner, and tries to complete a painting in one sitting. Bonin has a BFA and a BA in French, has studied poetry, art therapy, ballet and is a certified dance instructor. A recipient of numerous grants and awards, she has exhibited extensively, and her work was selected by the New York Foundation for the Arts for an exhibit which included art by Christo, Rosenquist and Rauschenburg. A CT native, Kevin Conklin chooses the gritty and angular architecture of the city to explore his fascination with light, shadow and formal abstract relationships. The building facades in his cityscapes are predominantly washed in warm browns, peaches and mauves; his brushstrokes at times softly flowing and at others, tight and hard-edged. Before dedicating himself full time to painting, Conklin enjoyed a successful career as an illustrator with clients including AMEX, Citicorp, Duracell, SNET and Save the Children. His illustrator’s eye is still evident, however, in his keen ability to capture both the particularity of the moment and the often fervent quality of urbanity. Conklin attended Paier College of Art and the MA College of Art. ###
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