By Larry Clifford

Experience the giant beauty of Isabella Di Bono's art: now on display at the Bunbury Gallery on East Lasalle, at the river crossing. Her show is currently open and will be in the gallery until November 1, 2025.

Isabelle di Bono, inspired by the beautiful cloud forests of her childhood Honduran home, explores in her art the giant, multi-layered cloud forest.

A metaphorical expression, and experience, as much a metaphorical experiment.

She relates to the cloud forest, both in her personality and in her art. The cloud forests of Honduras are specific, biodiverse ecosystems that define her amazing paintings. These forests, and their canopies, exist in the mountainous higher areas, and support a collection of epiphyte plants—plants that grow on each other: such as mosses, ferns, and orchids.

Mystery fills the cloud forest among the mist and clouds. Her giant multi-layered art impressively reflects the mystery. Is this also Di Bono?

Di Bono's personality unravels an understanding of her native worth and direction. Her inspiration for the visual language of the cloud forest acts as a symbol for determining her own nature. The cloud forest: high up in the mountains, shrouded in fog, teeming with beauty, growth, and endemic plants. Plants and art that only grow in these special places.

Home.

Leaving her family in Honduras—her Italian father from California, her businesswoman mother, and her two younger sisters, Di Bono moved to America to attend Notre Dame, and remains here after attaining her Bachelor of Fine Arts. Although she began as an economics major, she quickly realized that her passion and her need for self-care led her to create art. She characterizes her early understanding of the artist's world as naïve, she persevered with the visual language of the cloud forest: its diversity, interdependence, and freedom.

Death and rebirth; decay, and then new growth. The need to grow, and change, and reconsider. She is equally inspired by the concept of jazz: what is perhaps,“just playing all the notes at once,” as she describes it, smiling.

Her BFA thesis discussed her process for creating abstract art by using vast possibilities of color, line, and form. Her art experiments with changes in opacity, texture, and viscosity. Abstract art, rooted in her fascination with a desire to create" mental landscapes that immerse the viewer into a state of presence," says Di Bono.

Her studio, located at Vested Interest, the restored Ziker factory building at 251 East Sample Street, South Bend, parallels her art and passion; resurrection, like the ever-changing cloud forest, chaos, plants, and ideas with opposite views, growing on each other, and living together. paints neatly arranged and organized, canvas waiting to be stretched and mounted by her, and turned into beauty—the layering of quick, intuitive responses, coupled with patient introspection.

Her mind continuously negotiating between seemingly opposing mindsets: conscious versus instinctive; free, versus bound and restricted; continuous, versus fragmented.

See more at bunburygallery.com.

See More of Di Bono's Art