This is the third in a series highlighting the Blue Buffalo Artists whose work will be on display at the MonDak Heritage Center in Sidney the month of October.
Bonnie Zahn Griffith is a plein air painter and landscape artist who works mostly in pastels, oils and monotype printing. The rich pigments of pastel and oil allow her to create paintings that have the brilliance and bold color seen in the landscapes of the western United States. Griffith constantly experiments with a variety of mediums such as encaustics, inks, paints and pastels. The best representation of the statement she wants to make is with the bold and brilliant pigments, whether pastels, oils or printing monotypes, allowing her to bring depth and texture, light and mood into a painting or print. Her goal is “to create work that draws the viewer in to experience the time of the day, the temperature, the sound, the smells. I want the viewer to experience the work and get lost in it – even for a moment.”
“My love of the landscape prompts me to paint it. I look for a story to tell when I look at the sagebrush hills, the lush river lands, the wheat fields, the intense greens of spring in rich mountain valleys and the ever changing colors of the desert. My mediums allow me to tell that story with great color and intensity and, if I have been able to create a piece that brings the viewer into it to experience it, then I have done my job.”
Griffith grew up on a ranch near the Missouri Breaks in Central Montana, the child of artist parents. “We lived in a remote area and there wasn’t much for a kid to do in the evenings but read and draw. I did both, getting into my mother’s paints and paper; and create I did. My life was riding horses, drawing and painting, reading and all the stuff, including chores, a kid growing up on a good sized ranch does. I don’t remember ever ‘being bored’ because there was always something that interested me in one of those areas.” Griffith attended college in Chicago in the early 70s, staying there to work after graduation. Missing the west, she moved back to Montana in 1975 and worked until employment moved her to southwestern Washington. After over twenty years there, Griffith now lives in Miles City, MT where she is the executive director of the WaterWorks Art Museum and spends her free time painting. She is a member and President of the Northwest Pastel Society, member of the Landscape Artists International (juried membership), Pastel Society of the West Coast and the Blue Buffalo Artists group. Griffith has served as a curator for an art center in Washington and as a juror of art exhibitions in the northwest. She also teaches workshops in pastel painting.
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