Bonnie Marris has been studying and painting wolves, foxes, dogs and horses since childhood. Always, when Marris wasn’t around animals, she was painting them, and this love led her to pursue degrees in zoology and animal behavior. Animals are an integral part of both her life and her art.
She cites David Shephard, the great British painter and preservationist, as her hero and mentor. His mastery of color and pure magic on canvas, she says, motivate her every day to become more skillful, to make an animal seem to step off the linen canvas so that viewers hold their breath in preparation for the meeting. If anyone has never had the opportunity to see a fox running through a field and stopping suddenly to listen for a mouse, or to watch a pack of wild wolves at play, Marris wants to give that person some of the experience with a painting.
She also wants to let viewers see each animal she paints as an individual, to connect with its soul. Studying color and light, Marris says, has become an obsession with her. “Color sets a mood, an atmosphere that can create feelings ranging from contentment to terror. There are colors within colors, too. The many colors in a shadow, for instance, convey cold or heat. The way light plays with the subject is also very important. Light may dance across snow or water, then lead the eye through the thick fur of a wolf’s neck or flash in the corner of a cougar’s eye. I’m fascinated by hue changes in light as it ages with the day.”
The passion Bonnie Marris has for wilderness, for animals, and for light and color come together in her art, and she feels her work has accomplished its purpose when a viewer feels that same passion.