Featured Cover Artist: Bonnie Sol
Bird song and the soft scent of passion flower greet the senses from Bonnie Sol Hahn’s home studio, which overlooks a backyard lush with flowers and fruit. From this perch, Bonnie Sol creates oil paintings that capture Hawai‘i’s natural beauty.
Even before she moved to Hawai‘i at the age of four, Bonnie Sol—whose name means “pretty sun”—told her parents that she would grow up to be an artist. During her childhood years in Kalapana and Kea‘au, she frequently sketched her surrounding environment.
Bonnie Sol allows the confluence of beauty, experience, and emotion to ignite the creative process.
She is especially drawn “to the way light surfs the waves, the way a sunset streaks across the sky, the way wind blows through the palms. From the boldness of the distant mountain as it rises above the clouds, to the intricacies of a flower as it opens to the sun, I find myself compelled to pick up a paintbrush.”
When she returns to her studio, she uses a photograph to help recall the moment that she wishes to convey. Painting in thin layers, she builds up colors and saturation on the canvas or board.
Her paintings reveal an intimacy with places like the end of Kaloli Street in Hawaiian Paradise Park, Lili‘uokalani Gardens in Hilo, and Kuki‘o Bay in Kona. Her landscapes often feature unique cloud formations, rippling waters, and rich colors that invite the viewer to feel expansive and at peace. Paintings of hula dancers, flora and fauna, and patterns in nature also grace her portfolio.
Bonnie Sol made her first art sale during high school in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where her family moved when she was 12. In 1998, she graduated from a dual degree program, earning a BA in Anthropology from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts and a BFA with a concentration in painting from The School of the Museum of the Fine Arts in Boston.
When she is not painting, she is outdoors living her philosophy of appreciating the fascinating world around us with her woodworker husband and her bulldog, Po.
“We need to remember to look up and around,” Bonnie says. “I believe this is one key element to having people take better care of the environment. And when they cannot be outdoors, my work brings a bit of the outdoors inside.”
The cover painting, Pu‘ukoholā Heiau 20”x60” oil on canvas gallery wrap is available and on display at Plantation Interiors, Teak Garden and Lanai in Kailua-Kona.
Bonnie Sol’s work is available in seven fine art galleries across Hawai‘i Island—Harbor Gallery, Plantation Interiors, Teak Garden and Lanai, Cliff Johns Gallery, Volcano Art Center, One Gallery, Kohala Coast Fine Art, Gallery of Great Things.
