By Grant Terwilliger
Senior BFA student Noah Bonesteel draws inspiration for his art from the landscape around him, and not only creates traditional landscapes, but ones that draw from ecology, natural history and human history.
Bonesteel confronts issues such as pollution, climate change and habitat destruction in his art. A big impact on his art came from his childhood in rural Averill Park, New York in Rensselaer County.
“My favorite subject matter is trees and roots. I think growing up and learning to appreciate and love the forest is pretty critical in shaping how I think about the world and the art that I’m making,” Bonesteel said. “Having parents who helped nurture a relationship with me and the woods and the land is all pretty foundational.”
Bonesteel works with several different media in his painting. He uses found objects in his artwork to add depth to his work and he hopes to start finding stuff in the Saranac River for his work to further connect the work to a place.
Bonesteel has experimented with many different types of media during his art education, and he has found that acrylics allow him to create layers to his painting faster and add texture to his pieces.
“I was using watercolor, charcoal and my colored pencils, and now I’ve been working mostly with acrylic paint,” Bonesteel said. “Recently, I started doing a lot of printmaking, so I’m using an intaglio process and combining a bunch of different processes. It’s sort of a different way of thinking, but also uses the same kind of imagery. It’s just a different way to create an image.”
One of Bonesteel’s favorite works is a composition that he included in one of his BFA shows.
“I did this little painting for my BFA show last year that has Gallic roots and fish and flowers in it. I think that’s my favorite, because it kind of set me on a new path of what I did for a while, and what I’m doing now,” Bonesteel said.
Bonesteel said that he would like to be a professional painter in a few years, with a part time job to pay the bills. He is working to create more paintings and get his art into more shows and residencies. Currently Bonesteel has a couple solo shows and group shows lined up for after graduation.
Stylistically, Bonesteel has taken inspiration from Anselm Kiefer, a German artist who creates landscapes but intertwines poetry, philosophy and mythology into the landscape. He is also inspired by Alexis Rockman, an ecological painter and Pete Russom, a retired professor of art at SUNY Plattsburgh.
Bonesteel’s artistic ideas come naturally from the environment around him in a given moment. His process includes a lot of sketching with pencils as well as charcoal, then after everything is mapped out he paints parts of his vision onto the canvas. He continues this process throughout the creation of his work.
“I feel like once you can start to pick out things within the work, you can make more connections within it, and that’s sort of the goal is to invite the viewer into something, and then hopefully you’ll find more and maybe think about something differently, or relearn something that you hadn’t really considered,” Bonesteel said.
