Center for Spiritual Living of the North Coast  

Elizabeth Bonn Zimmerman

Elizabeth Bonn put her art on hold for many years before taking it up again.

She has been a nurse whose “nom d’artiste has been Elizabeth Bonn. She says she has been taking art classes since she was a child growing up in Chicago and has been interested in art all her life Bonn says she’s done sketching, water-colors, plaster and paper sculpture and currently is working with acrylic and linoleum block prints as well as collages of mixed media. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the Institute of design at Illinois Institute of Technology. She studied known etching techniques with well known printmakers Liza Jones and Sherri Wolf at print workshops.

Locally, Bonn received painting instruction from Ruth Rowe and Barbara McKee and studied printmaking with Royal Nebeker at Clatsop Community College for two years. She was part of a three woman show at CCC and member of Gallery 7, an artists’cooperative in Long Beach. Her work has been shown at various juried shows in coastal Washington and Oregon, most notably Connecting Waters in Longview, twice. She has had numerous shows at the Ark Restaurant, Ilwaco Library, Ocean Beach Hospital, and the Chinook Observer.

She says her work “deals with the transformative nature of the unconscious, occasional allusions to the Junglan Psychology, and the paradoxical nature of healing.” “The ocean represents the unconscious, and the Creatures and human figures found there express emotions, spirit and our inner being.”

October 2006

“Recently I started painting mermaids at a time in my life when I needed a little levity. The mermaids I create are beings of the ocean of un/consciousness. They each bring a positive gift, most give a greeting. A smile, a dance, a fish, or a strong fearless stance may also come through. Perhaps they are in a trance or emotion of their own , that separates them from the rest of us for a while. Some are doing Yoga or playing harp. Who knows what the next one will be doing?”        -Elizabeth Bonn