Bonnie Bisbee - Color Me a World | Lost Myths Ink, LLC

Her education in art was extensive and formal, proving she knows the basics of the art world even if she chooses to flaunt their conventions. Three years at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris; Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her one woman shows have been set in such variant venues as Grace Cathedral and Johns Hopkins Medical Center. She has participated in group showings at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, the Collins Gallery, Vision and Magick, the Galerie Houston-Brown and the Tournesol Galerie, both in Paris. Her teaching credentials range from Norwich University to John F. Kennedy University. She is equally adept at teaching children and adults. She is, in short, the consummate artist...but acceptance in the world of fine art hasn't come easily or quickly.

"My work has a similar goal as yoga: to yoke or unite seemingly disparate realities, and also cultures, showing the ultimate Oneness of the multi-layered cosmos we inhabit -- and its' essential sacredness, which has subtle implications of the wisdom of appreciation and responsibility. Each of my paintings is mean to be a sort of map, showing different aspects of this wisdom, hopefully leading the viewer to an altered sate that is basically ecstatic. I believe that the heart of the universe is bliss and love everlasting, which goes by many names in many cultures."
Sound a little heavy? Not once you've seen her work. Bonnie Bisbee's paintings are vivid, clear and almost childlike; but executed with very adult skill and ability. One is looking at a dream, or at a scene taken out of some fantastic tale or legend, which is correct, as a little time spent with the artist makes clear.
"Being a storyteller makes my work hard for people to understand. I write stories for children as well, but it's a very different kind of work from my painting. It's another kind of storytelling...a painting has a story in the same way a dream has a story. You take the symbols from the dream and you associate with them and that's the way my paintings are meant to be read." 
She has been accused of not being serious because her subjects would never have concerned Rembrandt, or Van Gogh. Animals, jewels, glitter and the stuff that dreams are made of aren't in the `serious' or `painterly' category, because that's what museum review boards say. To be taken seriously, paintings must be about serious subjects. She uses all of these `lighthearted' subjects and techniques extensively.
"Something important in beginning my art processes are early memories of Christmas trees and things sparkling. It really got to me, the color and the sparkle. After art school, I started experimenting with jewels. I had to break through the prejudice against that, because in mainstream art that's considered pretty tacky. I use glitter in the same way that children make their Christmas cards with it. In a way that was important -- to break through the taboo -- through the forbidden zone. When I went to art school to paint animals was considered very sentimental -- a sentimental subject. A lot of things I do are in spite of that. Glitter and shiny jewels are to me a metaphor for enlightenment."
Bisbee is influenced by myths, religions and styles from around the globe; East Indian, South American Indian, etc. Well studied in myths though she is, she doesn't always learn about a symbol until after it's painted. She works from inspiration and frequently goes hunting for the meanings of her dreams after she's painted them.
"I have a closeness with Native Americans, with their basic religion. East Indian religion has been influential; I do yoga so I'm involved with that. Of course I've been reading about the ancient European cultures as well, clear back to Crete and some of the Goddess cultures. I'm reading all the time; I'm interested in world history. To see the artwork of any part of the world is fascinating. It all influences me to some extent. I really work from the unconscious, so that when I'm painting I'm not thinking intellectually; this is how my work started and how it still is. On the other hand my brain is always catching up with the work. In my reading I often find out on an intellectual level what my paintings are all about."
Bisbee paints her own vision, and although she loves compliments just like everyone else, she refuses to be influenced by them. 
"It was always nice when people responded to my work, but in a way it didn't touch what I was doing. People have a definite bias toward realism in this culture, so I usually got praised more for my drawings that were realistic than for my drawings of my own inner reality. It didn't stop me doing them. I did a lot of both kinds of drawings when I was a child. In a way praise and blame never touched that part of me. It's a good thing because there have been times as an adult when being an artist is very hard, so you better darn well like the process or quit."
Recently, Bisbee has been experimenting even more, due to a machine called a 'photron'. This machine strobes colored light into the brain via the eyes, changing brain-waves and stirring up forgotten memories, some, according to Bisbee, from past lives. She feels the use of the machine, pioneered by a doctor in New Mexico named Sabine, has helped her personal growth and sense of color.
Like a number of other visionaries, Bisbee is made uncomfortable by our ongoing rape of our mother, Earth. Her offering in the ecological vision category is entitled Our Lady of the Dispossessed. She explains the painting thus: "One rather new, for me, kind of painting I finished not too long ago. It deals directly with the ecological crisis we all face. Showing a tearful lady with animal angels (gods? guides?) above, while earthly animals run from city and destroyed forest habitat, across the painting to a waiting, idyllic spirit world. Implying perhaps that the Lady helps them find refuge while leaving us to live in the mess we're making; or possibly, that this spirit world is a vision of a probably, sometime-renewed Earth."
Bisbee continues her study of world religions and myths, incorporating them all into her paintings. Christian, Buddhist, Hindu...she finds beauty and meaning in them all, and helps us to see it, too.
See more of Bonnie Bisbee's artwork at this website: www.artheals.org.
This article provided by <a href="http://www.mediocom/net">MedioCom</a>.