Artospective: Paintings by James Bonnici from Australia.

'Self Portrait in Bathroom' , oil on canvas, 26cm x 26cm, 2011.

An Interview with James Bonnici.

Who and where are you from?

My name is James Bonnici and I live and work in Melbourne, Australia.

How you got into this?

My dad was a hobby painter and as early as I can remember, I would sit and watch him paint. So I guess being exposed to the idea of painting as a young child, making art seemed like a normal thing to do.

What is your driving force?

I'm always drawn to an image first; something that is evocative enough and has a sense of ambiguity or strangeness, that it stays in the mind for days, that I need to translate it to paint or charcoal to bring it to life.

What kind of work you do and why?

I always work in the medium of oil painting or drawing. I like the history and evolution behind these two processes, in particular their relationship with figurative realism, and to see if I can add anything interesting to it. The imagery I choose goes through a process of obscuring, distorting and manipulating of reality to invoke a sense of rupture, challenging the representation of the physical world, hinting at the more ambiguous nature of being and existence.