Description
Bougie 40 celebrates the color, age, and character of a 40-year-old bougainvillea bonsai.
What first attracted me to this tree was its extraordinary display of color. The small flowers are surrounded by brilliant purple and magenta bracts, creating a mass of saturated color against the dark structure of the trunk and foliage. I developed the surrounding patterned background as an active part of the composition, using shifts of green, yellow, blue, violet, and white to intensify the color of the bonsai rather than simply place it against an active background.
The aged bonsai pot was equally important to me. Its worn, irregular surface carries a sense of wabi-sabi—the Japanese appreciation of beauty found in age, imperfection, simplicity, and impermanence. Rather than refine or diminish those qualities, I wanted to emphasize them. The weathered pot provides a quiet foundation beneath the exuberant flowering tree.
Created through my mixed-media process of drawing, transfer, layered color, pattern, and direct mark-making, Bougie 40 moves between the recognizable presence of a bonsai and the energy of abstraction. Pattern and color surround the tree, while its dark trunk and aged pot give the composition weight and permanence.
The result is both a portrait of a particular bonsai and an exploration of the contrasts that make bonsai compelling to me: age and renewal, restraint and exuberance, imperfection and beauty.
Other bonsai mixed media related artwork can be found at https://www.reekersart.com/product-category/paintings/mixed-media/
Social Media
You Tube – https://www.youtube.com/ronreekers ; Here you can see me in the process of making a Bonsai related artwork
Instagram @ronreekers; Here you will see my latest Artwork and Bonsai work
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/reekersart
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/ronreekers; Where as low as $3 month you can become a patron and get a free print on your yearly patronage.
