Ray Bonnell

Rural Northern California was my stomping ground as a youth. I lived in an area dotted with abandoned mines, hydraulic diggings, and coyote holes (small shafts dug down to bedrock in search of a paystreak). Much of the country was wilderness, and I grew up appreciating the wildness, but also fascinated by the area’s history and the aesthetics of decay as the works of man gradually merged back into nature.

My family moved to Alaska in 1970. I graduated from Alaska Methodist University in 1974 with a bachelors degree in art, and went on to study art at the post-graduate level at the University of Alaska – Fairbanks. One of the subjects I studied in college was the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic that stresses the beauty of the “imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.” This resonated with my interest in the aesthetics of decay and transience, and combined with my interest in history, perhaps guided me in my cross-discipline art/history journey.

For over 40 years I have been tramping the back roads and trails of Eastern Interior, Southcentral, and Southeast Alaska, and, through sketches, photos and notes I’ve been documenting historic sites, as well as depicting the region’s natural beauty through my art. For 12 years I produced a historical column for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner newspaper, marrying my detailed pen & ink drawings to essays about historic sites around Alaska. That column won the Alaska Historical Society’s Contributions to Alaska history award. To date I have produced three books on Alaska historic sites, and am working on a third book. I have exhibited my pen & ink drawings at numerous Alaska galleries, museums and businesses; and have taught art classes at the Osher Life-long Learning Institute (OLLI) here is Fairbanks.