This week, we talked to Bonnie Halsey-Dutton, a fantastic artist, tutor and world traveller who lives and paints in the Black Hills of South Dakota, U.S. Most of the time she works in her home studio, but she also loves to paint outdoors as the Black Hills offer many magnificent motives.

Bonnie loves to travel the world and incorporates the global influences she is exposed while travelling to into her art. This becomes evident in her renderings of landscapes and of places she has already visited. Her love of world culture is reflected through a series of paintings in which she explored trade beads as a symbolic subject matter representing cultural interconnectedness.

In our "Ten Questions" Q & A session we talked to Bonnie about travelling, teaching and painting at home and away.

1. Which trip / tour had the biggest impact on you and your life as an artist and why?

I participated in a group exhibition in London in 2010, and this experience continues to influence my art. Taking my art overseas and observing people’s reaction to it provided me with a bridge between making, exhibiting, and teaching as an international tutor.

2. Why is traveling important for you as an artist?

Painting while traveling opens my eyes to not only my surroundings in new locations, but it heightens my awareness of the beauty that surrounds me when I return back home. The more displaced I am from my artistic norm, the more I find that travel impacts my art. For example, when teaching in Portugal, I am able to experience the sea, which is not available to me in South Dakota. Painting water in new ways while in Portugal recently impacted how I rendered a painting of a regional creek.

3. What’s your favourite destination to paint and why?

I love European villages, and have painted and sketched a great deal in Italy. I am drawn to historic winding alleyways and ancient architecture that has served as a backdrop to countless human lives over centuries.

4. Is there a destination you haven’t been to yet that you would love to visit?

The world is vast, and there is much to experience. I would like to travel and make art in Croatia in the near future.

5. What motivated you to start your teaching career?

After obtaining my BA in Fine Art, I came to teaching by leading adult art education workshops. I found I had an unexpected love and ability as an art education and I eventually earned a MA in Curriculum and Instruction. Over my teaching career, I have taught art to all age groups, from Kindergarten to University, and I went on to earn a PhD in Art History and Education. Ironically, I am now back where I started; enjoying the personal engagement if find in adult art education. I love working with adult artists, who may have had to table their pursuit of art, and are now able to devote the time.

6. What were those formative days of teaching like?

Because I didn’t initially set out to be an art instructor, I was surprised by how much I viewed teaching as an artistic act. I found the process of engaging one-on-one with creative minds to be enormously rewarding, and I still find it so.

7. What do you like most about the combination of teaching and travelling?

I enjoy sharing what I know with others, so I find fulfilment through both as an international art tutor. I have broad art education and travel experience, so it a natural fit for me.

8. What was the funniest experience throughout your teaching career?

It is probably a “you had to be there” thing, but as the workshop progresses, bonds of friendship and comfort are built, and with that comes the ability to clown around. Several of the participants in my last class found a place where unwanted items were discarded for trash pickup. Throughout the day, loose objects would show up and again disappear, so it became a game to see what outlandish things one could spot in the discard location. Several dolls showed up, a rolling pin, vintage table cloth, antique bed frame, appliances… it humoured the group to see what appeared as well as what disappeared before the nightly pickup. There were always more items deposited the following day. It made us all laugh to tell tales of what was spotted, as though we could take any of these “treasures” back home.

9. What inspires you and which motifs do you like best, and why?

Through painting, I am inspired by concepts of how the past impacts the present. I have series of paintings that explore the Native American and Western cultures of my region of South Dakota. I have expanded upon that series of work and I specifically contemplate the interconnection of global cultures.

10. What artists influence your work most?

Gustav Klimt and Pierre Bonnard have especially impacted my use of pattern and colour.

11. If you hadn’t become an artist, what would you be doing right now?

I was drawn to architecture and interior design, and these things continue to be passions in my life. I‘ve known I wanted to be an artist since I was nine, so my life has always circled around my passion.

12. You have a painting and sketching holiday in Dordogne, France in May 2019. Apart from this, do you have any upcoming shows, collaborations, book releases you would like us to know about?

I am a member of the Artists of the Black Hills, and as a group we exhibit and promote the art in this region. I have several group shows lined up for 2019 with this organization. Also, I am designing an artist retreat for the Black Hills region of South Dakota for the summer of 2020, which promises to be a truly unique art and travel opportunity.