The Work of the Fine Artist of Joe Bonomo
Joe Bonomo is a well-known equine artist and a regular fixture during the spring and fall meets at Keeneland.
“God gives everyone a talent to use.”
It has been the practice of the Kentucky Farm Bureau (KFB) News to adorn the cover with scenic farm scenes and farm people from throughout the state. However, in 2024, the magazine had the honor of featuring the work of fine artist Joe Bonomo on the cover for the second time. His talents first graced the cover last May with his historic rendition of “The Patriot”.
His most current painting contribution for the November/December edition features “Farm Santa” enjoying his favorite magazine as KFB welcomes the Christmas season.
KFB News Editor Tim Thornberry said having such a gifted artist lend his talents to the magazine cover has been a great honor.
"As with most magazines, the cover serves as a way to invite readers in to enjoy the publication's contents," he said. "The first cover Joe provided for KFB News proved to be one of our most viewed editions online, and we feel certain the same will be true for our Christmas edition. It should be a real collector's item for our many members, and we can't thank Joe enough for sharing his beautiful artwork with us."
During a recent taping of the KFB News podcast, Bonomo shared his thoughts on his art and how much it means to him.
"I started at a very young age growing up in a big city on the East Coast where my father gave me some great advice saying how much he enjoyed my art and thought it was something I should pursue," he said. “However, he also told me if I really wanted to make a living, I needed to work in a field that would be more consistent."
That advice led Bonomo to his first career as an electrician, something he said worked out well for him and supported him in starting a family and paying the bills, but his love of art never left him.
“I'm a Christian man, and I know that God has given me gifts for a reason,” he said. “What it comes down to is if I'm given a talent like art, I'm accountable to use that talent to share God's grace and glory with the rest of the world. I think when people look at my art, they see enthusiasm and a connection with the human existence.”
Bonomo recounts earlier years of learning the art skills he uses today.
‘When I first learned to paint as an adult, my instructor, who was an unknown artist but a great teacher and mentor, showed me the importance of being able to see correctly. Often times we go through our day, taking for granted the visual information that is right in front of us. We recognize what we think should be there and ignore the way objects actually appear,” he said. “I went to him specifically to learn how to paint, and it took a year, if not longer, before he would even allow me to put a paintbrush in my hand. And the reason for that is that he saw the importance of teaching me how to see over how to paint.”
Bonomo added that by teaching him how to see, he learned how to sculpt, draw, mold, paint, and use pastels, all of which are interchangeable as long his eye is in tune with what visual information is coming to him.
But “seeing” is just a part of what goes into his work.
“Secondly would be a knowledge of the artistic tools and what those tools will do for me; what are the limitations of different mediums.” And then, I guess from my religious side, is a joy of seeing what is unique and what makes everything individual, with its own emotional content," he said. “The plight of American culture nowadays is that people are pessimistic. They don't see the good in things generally but in Kentucky, people are mostly good, wanting to experience the good things in life. I hope that my art, whether it was the last painting that I did for Farm Bureau or the next one, they see things that make them feel good about where they are and what they're doing, and why. That's my focus.”
As an artist, Bonomo is always looking for new forms of inspiration, and subject matters that really spark his interest. His equine art is a testament to one of those inspirations.
“I was always a portrait artist, so, in moving to Kentucky, I was thinking, I needed to paint more equine sporting events,” he said. “To be quite honest, I was fearful of it. There are a lot of people out there who paint horses very well and I was afraid my horses were going to look more like big dogs!”
That has been far from reality as Bonomo has become a well-known equine artist and a regular fixture during the spring and fall meets at Keeneland.
“Keeneland has a rich history of embracing the arts and it’s a great place to experience the better side of nature, both human and equine” he said. “There are a lot of artists and photographers who fixate on the finish line or winners circle, but I go for the less noticed, the barn area, the people who work in the industry and I get their sense about what they're doing as they're doing it, which is a story unto itself.”
Bonomo emphasized that as younger artist, he would always train himself to paint from life as to capture an essence of what he was looking for and maybe refine it in the studio.
“But as I get older, especially in equine sports, I primarily work off of photographs because you just can't have a horse stand still long enough to get everything that you need to get down,” he said. “So, photographs have helped me quite a bit, and by doing that, it has made me a better photographer.”
While Bonomo works towards the completions of his artwork in order to make it project the message he intends, he sometimes ends up with a work that is different from when he first envisioned it.
“We call those wonderful surprises,” he said. “I trained with an artist in Montana at one time, and she would relate to this as the willingness to let go a little bit. Don't be so manufactured that everything has to be accounted for by your pre-notion of what the end is going to be. In the freedom of art, be unpredictable in your art. Don’t be timid. Be willing to use a broad, very verbose stroke that might be better than the one that you're trying to protect.”
No matter his subject, be it horses, people, or the wonderful covers he has graciously allowed KFB News to use, Bonomo uses the gifts he has been given to inspire and encourage others to look for their gifts in life.
“I truly believe that God gives everyone a talent to use,” he said. “You may not have found it yet or it may not even be in art. It might be music. It might be the way you speak, the way you are able to motivate other people, whatever it is, everyone does have that talent.”