Bonnie Hurst

Bonnie Hurst, a current resident of Decatur, Alabama, has been creating art for most of her life and in 2020 she embraced a heavily textured mixed media abstract painting style. Although she did take several art and painting classes on her way to earn her masters in secondary English education, she is mostly self-taught. She loves the beauty of subtle variations of tone over dramatic contradictions in texture creating a visible effect in her work that inspires the viewer to want to reach out and feel the transitions. She is inspired by the natural world as well as our human need to connect through the written word.

Her work has moods: tranquil (peaceful subtle colors), joyful (vibrant colors), or sentimental (muted colors). She attaches a quote to most of her paintings from an influential person from the 1920’s and names her paintings from these quotes. Using various materials such as resin, acrylic paint, pages from her favorite novels, and sculpt-able modeling medium, she creates a soothing mix of texture in her abstract paintings to bridge her love of the natural world, words, and the flapper era.