Louise Bonnet began her creative career working in illustration and graphic design. She shifted into the realm of painting in 2008, making acrylic paintings of people such as Yoko Ono or characters from films. Five years later, at the encouragement of artist friends, Bonnet picked up oil painting, which enabled her to manipulate light and build volume to describe the luxurious, imagined figures for which she is now known. Bonnet’s large, jewel-toned canvasses struggle to contain the tensed figures that clamber, crawl and crouch within their edges. While physical gender markers such as breasts and nipples announce themselves loudly in her paintings, Bonnet explains that her interest is in the ways that our bodies get the best of us and constantly betray us – failing, cramping, or leaking bodily fluids such as urine, saliva, blood, or milk. For The Milk of Dreams, Bonnet realises Pisser Triptych (2021–2022), a new, large-scale triptych, reminiscent of an altarpiece. The work references humans’ cycles of consumption and excretion – taking up and transforming raw materials, only to ceaselessly spit out waste on the other side. For Bonnet, excess bodily fluids have the opportunity both to pollute the landscape around us, but also to fertilise and enrich it. The crux is the gap between our feeling of, and actual capacity for, control.
Melanie Kress
