ABOUT
BA English/Philosophy Hunter College MA Nursing New York University Art Students League MemberBerti Bonforte is a contemporary painter who was born educated and has spent most of her adult life in New York City. As a health care professional she developed an expanding interest in qualities that define our human state of being. Her graduate studies are based on a nursing theory predicated on the interconnectedness between human beings, their environment and the universe at large through a system of ideas grounded in art, science and cosmology. This perspective of man’s place in the universe is reflected in her art. Studying at the Art Students League of New York enabled Berti Bonforte to formalize artistic expression in the basic language of shape, line, scale and color in different medium. Her painting journey evolved from expressionistic colorful figurative and landscape compositions to atmospheric abstractions as she sought to go beyond the familiar to express a spirituality, reflection or absence in her work. She describes this transition:“ I became intrigued with the possibilities of expression achieved through repeated applications of water soluble paint medium followed by scraping with industrial tools. With repeated applications compositions would dissolve before my eyes leaving drips, reflections. By Scraping surfaces with razor blades and sharp tools I removed areas of paint. I was transfixed by the atmospheric light and shadow produced and the echoing effect which conveyed a sense of memory and longing”
This constructive-deconstructive process was a harbinger of a painterly technique that emphasizes the richness and materiality of a painting surface, which at times approaches three dimensionality.