Born in rural South Australia (1992) and raised in far East Gippsland, Bonnie’s densely populated, surreal paintings bear trace of life off grid in Australia at the intersection of DIY and romanticism. Immersed in cultural discourse that is heated and alive, her work engages narratives around queer perspective, morality, subjectivity, and the tactile body.

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For Bonnie, painting is deeply rooted to analogue processes of collecting and building. Working in a sustained state of inquisition, she treats the surface more like a textile than a painting. Using folding techniques, wax, and salt to create unique patterns in the underpainting before painting and beading into the fabric. Paintings are repeatedly built back onto, cut and re-configured, and stretched and unstretched. Glass, wax, salt, flax, and oil all speak to a type of alchemy, and in the process of embedding pigment and stitching into the weave, the paintings become vessels that mirror the permeability of the world around her.  In the shift toward futures that are synthesised and sanitised, Bonnie’s paintings value the tangibility of materials and the body that uses them.

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Bonnie currently lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. She completed a Master of Fine Art at RMIT in 2023 where she was awarded the Lowenstein’s Arts Management Prize. She has recently been shortlisted for the 2026 Midsumma Art Award, was awarded the Red Salon Art Prize at Red Gallery’s Inaugural Art Prize and received an Honourable Mention at Brunswick Street Gallery’s 2026 Small Works Prize. She has held solo exhibitions in commercial and artist run galleries throughout Melbourne and rural Victoria and participated in numerous group exhibitions. Her work is held in Federation University’s permanent collection and private collections both locally and internationally.