Bonsack Art Gallery, School and Studio are located in Oakdale, California. Debi Bonsack was raised with art. Her mother and two aunts had a portrait painting studio in Oakdale. While Mother and Aunts worked, Debi would join in. Debi Bonsack picked her own easel at an early age. She did her first oil paintings at the age of seven and has been making art ever since. She cannot remember a time that she ever thought she would be anything other than an artist.
Debi believes the only part of the world you can change is the part in which you come in contact. This belief convinced her that teaching art was for her. At the age of thirty she went to work full time with Modesto City Schools. She has taught all ages from kindergarten through adults, and finds high school students most rewarding. As a teacher, she feels it is important to be adept in all mediums. The common link seems to be her subject, which keeps returning to the antiquities she loves.
Being a native of a cowboy community, Debi's work often has a western flavor. She enjoys the country life and finds peace at home with her horse and her one hundred-year-old farmhouse on the river. Her first painting of memory was a very colorful painting of a cowboy boot, which she did in kindergarten. That early painting still reflects in Bonsack paintings. The artist's western pieces, as well as her paintings of antiques, represent the slower, simpler life she loves.
Ms. Bonsack runs workshops, and classes at her art gallery, next to her one hundred and five year-old farmhouse on the Stanislaus River. You will learn the art of silk painting, oil painting, aqua medium or mixed medium pastel. As a teacher, she feels it is important to be adept in all mediums. She started her present school and gallery in 2000. It was always a dream to have an artist retreat for all artists to escape and learn.
Bonsack work can be found in collections across the United States and as far away as Asia. Oil paintings, textural acrylics and pastels focusing on simple times and simple things. Most Bonsack subject matter is antique artifacts. These larger than life pieces feed her need to simplify. Bonsack is also an accomplished western artist, depicting figures and livestock from a days gone-by era.
