Pluto’s Desire, Bonnie Hofkin, oil, 22” x 30”

“Somewhere between the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, I found my muse.  I'm drawn to rich distressed textures, decay and patinas of the ancient world and find it a perfect backdrop for the polished human form.  I reenacted this aged-frescoed quality in the studio and allow it to support the figure and tell its story. My paintings merge classical polished sculptural forms with roughhewn environments. The raw catapults the rendered.” - Bonnie Hofkin

 www.hofkin.com
IG: @bonnie_hofkin
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If Bonnie Hofkin’s illustrations conjure up thoughts of Da Vinci or other Italian masters, it’s not by accident. Her unique style, in which the finished is juxtaposed with the unfinished, and the rendered figures express a raw, yet graceful energy as if they were emerging from the page, is both dynamic and classical.

Even the graphite lines, intentionally left in place, help to evoke a feeling of contrast and serve as a backdrop for the more highly rendered details of anatomy.  

Her inspiration came early. Growing up as the daughter of a physician, she was surrounded by and drawn to all medical books and magazines lying around the house. “They were my first picture books as a child and it was a thrill when my illustrations ended up in those same journals years later.”  

But her real epiphany came as a young teenager on a family trip to Italy. There, she visited La Academia, famous as the art museum housing Michelangelo’s David. And as impressive as this masterpiece was, It was the Bound Slave, and other similar works lining the hallway leading up to David, that truly captured the imagination of the young artist. These roughly hewn sculptures depict captives as they endeavor to burst free from their marble prison of unfinished, raw stone. You can almost feel their struggle as they strain to liberate themselves. The bits and pieces of their anatomy that are visible to the observer appear to be held captive by the stone. And Bonnie became fascinated by both the almost electric energy of the pieces, as well as the combination of the raw vs. the realized—features that continue to inform her work to this day.  

Her progression to a more mature artist began during her undergraduate years at the University of California at Berkeley taking art courses taught by Joan Brown, Peter Volkus, and Elmer Bischoff. This prepared her to be accepted to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Three years at the Art Center shaped her as an illustrator and introduced her to another major influence; painter and instructor Dan McCaw, to whom she dedicated her master’s thesis on color theory. Although McCaw encouraged her to pursue a career as a painter, her lifelong love affair with anatomy won out and she next moved on to the University of Texas Southwest Medical School where she earned a master’s degree in medical illustration.  

And she’s never looked back. While Bonnie has tackled a wide range of topics and has done commercial work for companies as diverse as Nike, the New York Times, and Classico Pasta Sauce, it is still the human body, especially when in motion that continues to be her first love--due in large measure to those unfinished and evocative blocks of marble in Florence.