Steve Bonner – About the artist

Hi, I’m Steve Bonner and I’m a self-taught professional artist, a painter, and one way or another, I pretty much always have been. For most of my life I worked commercially, writing and illustrating signs and posters, predominately posters for the Night Club and Leisure industry, and have been known to paint the occasional pub chalkboard – it’s good to keep my hand in.

When computers took over back in the ’90’s, rather than put aside my paintbrushes (the posters were all hand painted in those days), I took to fine art and never looked back. I’ve been painting pictures ever since. My work still has a faintly graphical quality to it – probably always will. An Art Dealer once told me my paintings all looked like record album covers. He may have been right, but then he was a bit of an arse, as are many in his profession.

A handful of galleries here in the UK have historically hung my work but I’m not actually represented by a single one – never have been. I have my own mini gallery in East Wittering:  it is small, but it enables me to hang my larger pieces which is handy.

If I have to be pigeon-holed I suppose it would probably be as a marine artist. Whether I’m painting the beaches of Southern England, one of the finest of which is just a couple of hundred metres from my home, or those of beautiful Barbados in the Caribbean, the sea is often present. That said seascapes aren’t the only genre I’ll paint: I’m equally at home painting the figure, or occasional fantasy subjects, pretty much as the mood takes me!

I work in most mediums – oils, watercolours or acrylics, even airbrushing on occassion and, with my commercial background, I can happily work in household gloss and emulsion, paint is paint when all’s said and done, but my preference is always for oils: I love the malleability of oil paints, the way they take on a life of their own as you paint with them, the flow of the brush seems to define the painting as much as the subject – it’s huge fun. There really is no better medium for waves and clouds, and I adore painting waves and clouds!

The downside to oil painting in this country is the time it takes for them to dry during the winter: consequently I usually switch to acrylics for the winter months.

How much can you expect to pay for my work? Anywhere from 150 quid for one of my little affordables to 2.5k: the bulk of them being £450.00 to £550.00. The most I’ve ever achieved is 6k (it was beautiful!) and my larger Caribbean paintings sold for up to 4.5K.  The most exasperating comments I’ve ever had – “I wish I’d known about you before I spent thousands on a painting in that gallery in Chichester”: that’s happened a couple of times!

I’m not exactly prolific. I generally produce one or two paintings a month with the big oils often painted over a couple of months: I am supposed to be retired when alls said and done!

My studio is in my garden in West Wittering, West Sussex, and is basically a giant shed (it IS pretty huge!) – it’s warm and dry, well ventilated, with good light, and so far has withstood the outrageous winds we get on this coast. As I said earlier it’s just a stones throw from one of the most beautiful beaches around, so give me a call to know you’re coming, then drive down, see my work and then stroll down the road to the real thing – just don’t chose a Bank Holiday weekend, with only one road on and off the Manhood Penninsula (as this area south of Chichester is bizarrely named) the holiday traffic can lock it up solid.

See you soon I hope. Warmest.

SB