Peter Bonner, was born in Australia and has been living and working in New York since 1998. Bonner studied drawing and painting in Melbourne from 1994 and during that time drew from the model obsessively. This fostered development in his work that led to him winning the Dobell Prize for Drawing in 1996, Australia’s preeminent Drawing Prize, and being selected a finalist in 1997 and again in 2000.

In 1998 Bonner’s painting, Exterior space - Melbourne (Bones scattered in the field) was exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia and brought him to the attention of the New York Studio School. This resulted in Bonner being awarded a scholarship to study at the School with the likes of Mercedes Matter, Charles Cajori and Esteban Vicente which he did from 1997 to 2001.

Since then Bonner has made work in the deserts in central Australia and the American South West, as well as making works from drawings and from Memory in his Brooklyn Studio. He completed a Masters by Research degree in 2010 investigating Perception, Memory and the Primitive. Over that time Bonner’s process has evolved from the ideas of those who were associated with or in the circle of the abstract expressionists into a process of continual construction and deconstruction that moves fluidly between the human figure and landscape, evoking an inner, emotive, bodily space and incorporates materials such as sand, rice paper, and charcoal.

Bonner has exhibited extensively in New York and in Australia, having solo and focused exhibitions in New York with John Davis Gallery, William Holman Gallery, Michael David gallery and more recently Anita Shapolsky Gallery as well as solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Brisbane and San Francisco.