Several months ago I reviewed a still life with a key by J Matt Miller — that piece, however, displayed the object against a wall. Todd Bonita places his keys on a background of wood, and, it appears that in such minimalistic scenes that makes all the difference. Impenetrable stone “rejects” the key and marks it as a notionally autonomous object, a carved and patterned chunk of metal, poised in a connotative vacuum, which is to be filled by the beholder’s imagination. Wood, however, immediately associates with a door, a foil that dovetails with a key to evoke a specific and familiar circumstance. In the former variation, the key appeared as a detached purposeless thing (an idealistic approach with its own merit), here it is being showcased as a practical instrument.
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Todd Bonita (visit his website, the blog “Painting-Life” and the “Art Blog“) is an American artist who paints realistic still life, portraits and marine scenes with boats, which play an important part in his repertoire and are the focus of this review.
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Often the message of a commercial advertisement contains a fundamental truth — people wouldn’t be tempted to consume advertised products if it wasn’t so. We may feel uneasy about the intermarriage of commercialism with our lives, with being tagged as “target audience” and so on but then, our lifestyle depends on it. Deprecation of consumerism in prosperous nations has long ago turned into righteous blathering lacking any real plan in dealing with the phenomenon. What we need, I believe, is a proactive reflection and actions that interpret and study the trend, not words. Alvin Richard does his part by examining how that basic human urge to seek pleasure and enjoyment, mixed with the secret Coca-Cola ingredients, stands the test of his brush.
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This is the end of the poll era. Let’s seal it in our memories forever and ever, and move on.
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These contemplative pieces conjoin portraits with detailed scenery into felicitous combinations. Compositional harmony transcends into an atmospheric psychic quality, where calm and confidence interlock and create tight and streamlined mental images of peace, and faith into what the future portends. We directly witness the artist’s interest in subtle psychological exploration, covert in still life due to the absence of human subjects. In some ways, people from the audience were the “models” for the florals, literally subjected to strong light effects; here the artist abandons drastic contrasts to make room for the children, and draw some general conclusions from the way they blend with their surroundings.
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