Nothing But Nudes

Nothing but nudes sounds hot, maybe even a little saucy, right?

Well, that’s what I first thought when I looked at a flyer

for the art gallery located on the second floor of the SUB. But,

after a few hours spent with local artist, (though she has had much

success, Boise is just lucky for her to call it home) Bonnie

Peacher, walking through the gallery I realized how perverse I

truly am.

The gallery, which is currently open and free for all to

experience until Dec. 11, features paintings of – well,

nothing but nudes. The gallery is a collection of works that

Peacher has been working on over the past nine years. It boasts a

collection of multiple styles of art work. It has charcoal pieces,

pastel pieces, acrylic pieces and oil pieces. It has pieces of

nudes in all forms. The only real prerequisite is nudity.

When walking through the gallery for the first time (without

Peacher), I couldn’t help but think I was doing something

dirty (I was raised Christian – what else can be expected?).

Not dirty like I was flipping through the twisted pages of Hustler.

It was more like a 13-year-old gawking over the underwear models in

the K-Mart ads. But, this is art, so it’s okay to look at

naked girls, right?

I got the solid feeling that even Boise State was a little

uneasy about the naked gallery. Even the school that was putting it

on gave me the feeling like this was not proper. On the outside

walls of the gallery the most “modest” pictures Bonnie

brought. The pictures feature figures’ backs and a women

sitting very strategically to cover all of her girl parts.

When I got to walk through the gallery with the Bonnie

Peacher, a 50-year-old mother of four, many of my questions on the

appropriateness were answered. I asked Bonnie about her passion for

painting naked people she said, “I see landscapes and I see

rocks and trees…but the human body is beautiful to

me.” It was my first glimpse into her world, and my first

step to newly found respect for the human figure.

We continued through the gallery and paused for a large amount

of time at what she calls her three allegorical pieces, more easily

identified as the three big paintings. The three pieces’

actual names are, “Musical Motivation,” “Nature

Inspired” and “Travel Pleasures.” The three

pieces stand out from the other pieces for a few obvious reasons.

The first reason is their size. The pieces are huge and demand

attention. The second is that the pieces use much more detail than

the other pieces. They have elaborate backgrounds that represent

daydreams (of course, this is interpretable for each person) of the

character in the piece. One dreams of Italy, another of a glorious

garden, and the last dreams of a dancing at a jazz club. For the

most part the pieces display much more vibrant colors than the

rest. Finally, the paintings are much less impressionistic from the

rest, and depict reality much clearer. The three pieces took a

combination of about one year to do. In the future Bonnie plans on

doing more pieces like these.

It was in front of these three pieces that the question

about nudity and its acceptance arose. And I could tell it was a

question Bonnie has had to answer multiple times. “The human

body is not perverse, it’s the human mind,” she said.

Simple yet true. She said that and then I looked back to the

allegorical pieces, and realized she was right. I looked around the

room, and didn’t think I was doing wrong. I saw life and the

beauty that exists in ribs, cheeks and our skin. I looked with a

clear mind and didn’t see anything hot or erotic, I just saw

the beauty the surrounds all of us. The beauty of us.

Beauty is precisely what Bonnie wants everyone to see. I asked

Bonnie what she tries to express in her work. She said, “I

don’t paint anguish of life, or curt political themes.

I’m looking to paint beauty, and I’ve chosen the human

body as my subject. I look at the beautiful aspects of

life…I want my work to please the senses.”

When walking through the gallery I stopped at a piece entitled

“Summer Breeze…is on my Mind,” which best

symbolized (for me) everything Bonnie works toward. The piece

features a women lying with her hands behind her head, her eyes

closed. She appears to be at a complete peace and what Bonnie

called “pure enjoyment.” The background is a vague mix

of light blue colors. At first I saw an ocean, but then after

reading the title I thought it could possibly be the breeze. I

asked Bonnie what it was meant to be, and she said, “Some

things need not explained, I think art should be open to

interpretation.” The important thing I decided was that the

painting was beautifully and like the women featured in it I felt a

pure enjoyment looking at it.

I went back to the gallery a final time to look and experience

the art for pleasure without Bonnie. I didn’t feel dirty,

sneaky or immoral at all. The vibrant positivity that the human

figure has to offer left me feeling a little better than before I

went in.

Jake Hansen
A&E writer
The Arbiter

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