Melissa Bonin

Widely recognized as a leading contemporary Louisiana landscape painter, Melissa Bonin resides in New Iberia, Louisiana. A true Cajun, she draws inspiration from life in the heart of sugar cane and bayou country. Her treatment of subject matter has been linked to works by Alexandra Drysdale and Elemore Morgan Jr.

Her signature bayou scenes, rendered in oil on linen, reflect the melting mistiness of the lush bayou regions.

“ There is a certain time of day, just before dark, when the human eye has difficulty seeing and imagination steps in to fill the gaps. At this time, color is at its richest and trees look like dark spirits waiting and walking in the distant cane fields.

My work is personal, poetic, and symbolic interpretation of my native, landscape. It possesses a unique language of color, light as spatial relationships.”

Melissa Bonin Studied Art under the tutelage of James Edmunds as a young painter and then William Moreland, Elemore Morgan Jr., Tom Secrest and Herman Mhire at The University of Louisiana where she received a BA cum laude in 1981.naturally and shortly thereafter she left for France to continue her studied and deepen her connection with her heritage, assisted by scholarship from LSU and Conseil pour le development de Francais en Louisiana (CODOFIL), She remained in France for some time and then returned to the U.S. to receive a BA cum. Laude in French 1984.

“ Ms Bonin’s work seems to claim it’s heritage from French ancestry. One can feel the infused magic of the impressionist’s eye tinting waters of a Louisiana bayou. I am reminded of her Oak trees, painted in the lost light of evening for their power to evoke time, place, and spirit. No one I know can make the paint sing in quite the same way. The sad resilient history of Acadiana made visible in the land of the water by a brush that is surely dipped in its heart.
Clyde Tressler, NY




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