Donna Bernstein
BIO
Donna Bernstein was born in New York. Largely self-taught, in school she held a one-woman show in the lobby of a local theatre and sold three pieces. This early success fed a passion for her art. Studying privately with artist Robert Dash, as well as at Hollins College in Virginia, she continued to draw and paint from life and her surroundings, supplemented with studies in Japanese ink work and brush techniques. After many successful years in business, in 1998 Donna and her husband, a national level soccer coach, moved to McCall, Idaho and began a new life. The house they rented happened to have an available garage studio…. it was there, surrounded by beauty and nature, wilderness and horses, that she re-connected to her art, and within three years began marketing to numerous shows and galleries throughout the country. Working on technique at the Boise Art Museum she sculpted. A number of these pieces have been placed in permanent collections.
STATEMENT
Many of my works are large or life-size urban equestrian paintings, "Urban Equines". By that I mean the energy, beauty, and classic equine form expressed in purely contemporary terms.
What gives my art its edge is my mixed media approach, and my dear familiarity with the form, movement and function of the anatomical horse. Having been inspired by them as a child I would visit neighbor’s horses and sit an entire day and watch, day after day. That meant noticing every slight ripple in a muscle; how they would flick the flies with their ears as they grazed, how they would jump for joy when the feeling arose. I studied their physiology, their bones, their illnesses and cures. I still have those many, many notebooks I wrote, as a student of the horse. I would then go home and sketch from memory – never when I sat with them – never took my eyes off them! But my memory, my fantasy, my energetic connection to horses helped to stylize them in my art, and part of that is what you see today. I often say I don’t paint horses; I paint how horses make me feel.
I also create a line of purely abstract paintings, in a signature style composed of dynamic lines, bold colors, sparked by the element of the formless. I am seduced by the subtle nuances of abstraction that evoke feeling. My pieces are at home in both formal collections as well as the large-scale spaces of modern design.
Influences most impacting my work are Rosa Bonheur, Degas, illustrator Paul Brown, as well as Georgia O’Keefe, Franz Marc and Picasso; Po Kim, Franz Kline, and Masatoyo Kishi.
As my art has matured, growing in complexity and often in size, my essential vision remains - The power of line, the fusion of color, the integration of natural balance.
Donna Bernstein was born in New York. Largely self-taught, in school she held a one-woman show in the lobby of a local theatre and sold three pieces. This early success fed a passion for her art. Studying privately with artist Robert Dash, as well as at Hollins College in Virginia, she continued to draw and paint from life and her surroundings, supplemented with studies in Japanese ink work and brush techniques. After many successful years in business, in 1998 Donna and her husband, a national level soccer coach, moved to McCall, Idaho and began a new life. The house they rented happened to have an available garage studio…. it was there, surrounded by beauty and nature, wilderness and horses, that she re-connected to her art, and within three years began marketing to numerous shows and galleries throughout the country. Working on technique at the Boise Art Museum she sculpted. A number of these pieces have been placed in permanent collections.
STATEMENT
Many of my works are large or life-size urban equestrian paintings, "Urban Equines". By that I mean the energy, beauty, and classic equine form expressed in purely contemporary terms.
What gives my art its edge is my mixed media approach, and my dear familiarity with the form, movement and function of the anatomical horse. Having been inspired by them as a child I would visit neighbor’s horses and sit an entire day and watch, day after day. That meant noticing every slight ripple in a muscle; how they would flick the flies with their ears as they grazed, how they would jump for joy when the feeling arose. I studied their physiology, their bones, their illnesses and cures. I still have those many, many notebooks I wrote, as a student of the horse. I would then go home and sketch from memory – never when I sat with them – never took my eyes off them! But my memory, my fantasy, my energetic connection to horses helped to stylize them in my art, and part of that is what you see today. I often say I don’t paint horses; I paint how horses make me feel.
I also create a line of purely abstract paintings, in a signature style composed of dynamic lines, bold colors, sparked by the element of the formless. I am seduced by the subtle nuances of abstraction that evoke feeling. My pieces are at home in both formal collections as well as the large-scale spaces of modern design.
Influences most impacting my work are Rosa Bonheur, Degas, illustrator Paul Brown, as well as Georgia O’Keefe, Franz Marc and Picasso; Po Kim, Franz Kline, and Masatoyo Kishi.
As my art has matured, growing in complexity and often in size, my essential vision remains - The power of line, the fusion of color, the integration of natural balance.
