Bonni Reid

"Bone Orchard”

Exploring the underpinnings, bumps, and anomalies in all manner of historical arcana, Bonni Reid's subject matter reflects a dark underlying mythos that belies the innocence, wonder, and imagination of a hazy past. Reid combines these elements in a clear, graphic, almost deadpan style, using her own hand-made ingredients mixed from gesso, egg tempera, shellac flakes and oil paint glazing for finish. Reid lives in the West End of Vancouver, British Columbia. When not brewing her own visual concoctions, she freelances as a colour designer for animation productions including six seasons of Cartoon Network's "Ed, Edd 'n Eddy".

“Trees like bones, skulls like fruit, organs like flowers, branches like veins - where live things die and dead things grow. A place that while very real in what it describes, can only be an impossibility when taken literally by its fanciful phraseology. This seemed to be the very place where my images bore their own fruit, further connotating this strange nowhere-land where the similarities of design in nature, resemblance between all organic things, whether anatomical, botanical, or even zoological, come together. “Somehow in this bone orchard everything is both mortal and immortal, yet all the same thing. And within these similarities lie questions, puzzles, possibilities that form playful nightmares, tricks of the eye - a natural surreality. Yet at the same time it convinces me that there can be no deceitful juxtaposition of imagery in this place and that the surreal is everywhere and all around. Because, really - that's life.”. - Bonni Reid