ARTISTS STATEMENT & BIO

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Over the past couple of decades, my paintings have evolved from trained classical realism to its more atypical counterpart by including objects from my inner vision. The result runs the gamut from humorously whimsical to hauntingly mysterious, yet always with one foot in a recognizable universe. Whether influenced by Yves Tanquy’s biomorphic forms or Lenora Carrington’s surrealism, I tend to dip my brush into the brighter colors of the primal soup, using my powers of observation and knowledge of the traditions of art history. My work has been described as Expressionistic, paying homage to the intuitive marriage of interior and exterior worlds, representing what is possible, but not probable.   

- miki boni

Brooklyn NY born Miki Boni began her career in Manhattan’s East Village drawing street portraits. With an insatiable appetite for travel and love of the camera, she has amassed image bank material that she dips into frequently for inspiration. She lived in Mexico as a working artist. “There, and in Russia, I was deeply influenced by surrealism and, in Japan, by minimalism. Each place I’ve visited or lived has deeply influenced my art and my life. In Mexico, the colors were totally unreserved; in the Northeast, they were muted; In Florida, the colors and forms were taken from the sea and the sunshine." Now in Chattanooga, her work is beginning to reflect her urban surroundings. Widely exhibited and in private collections in Mexico, Europe and the US, Boni is the first American woman painter whose work was selected to be part of a permanent collection at Museo Ateneo Cultural in Nayarit, Mexico. She was recently elected to Washington DC's National League of American Pen Women for her accomplishments in the visual arts. In addition to painting, she is also a published photographer and writer. In 2006, she and her husband, artist Tom Paulsin, visited Chattanooga and fell immediately in love with the City. Miki applied for and received an ArtsMove grant, moving here from Florida’s Gulf Coast in 2007.