“To travel is to live”, H.C. Andersen wrote in “My Life’s Adventure”.

This truly applies for Marietta Bonnet, who, even though she used to manage a finance association and still runs an art gallery in Copenhagen, is constantly “on the road”. All over the world. Maybe just except for Denmark, for she prefers dramatic landscapes and nature, which is not exactly something we can boast of in our flat, well-ploughed country.

When speaking of her pictures, we need to address her technique: Dry pastels and in between, especially for smaller works, oil crayons. A technique the probably most well-known protagonist of which was Edgar Degas, though quite a few pastels also may be enjoyed at the present exhibition of Anna Ancher’s works at SMK, The Danish National Museum of Art. The characteristics of pastel drawing are its grainy surface, a structure that makes it easy to smudge out, and colours with an intense and glowing light force.

A very special feature of Marietta Bonnet’s work is that she always uses handmade paper or papyrus. The first she often purchases in varying colours in Southeast Asia, Africa or in a few cases in Denmark. Quite often the motif is chosen from the indigo blue, orange or green shades of the chosen paper. Combined with the furrowed and raw surface of the paper, paper and crayons form their own landscape of knots and folds in each artwork.

A description of Marietta Bonnet’s imagery cannot avoid mentioning her favourite times of day: Sunrise, twilight, and night. The first two represent the transitional period of clear daylight fighting with the dark of the night, producing a very special deep hue. The night with its bellows black darkness, as you experience it in southern latitudes, sprinkled with bright lights from restaurants and cafes, torches or the yellow glow of a full moon.

The result is astonishing, refreshing, and altogether wonderful. We see night pictures from Marrakech that communicate an almost physical feeling of the music and smell of spices. We see pictures from the harsh cliffs of the Lofoten Islands and Cornwall, lit up by glowing sunsets. We see the charming Mediterranean culture of Nice and Amalfi, temples in South Korea fixed on yellow-grey papyrus, houses and palm trees in the tropical Caribbean and snowy winter moods from the deep Black Forest. All of it captured and portrayed with spontaneous crayon strokes, where coulour accents and light effects are sketched at a furious pace, to be worked over, if at all, at a later stage if it seems necessary. For Marietta herself it is all about the freshness and directness of the impression. The need to show us – and herself – exactly that moment when everything unites at a higher level, oozing of nerve, colour, fragrance, music and this intense joy of life.

Joy is altogether a key word to describe the pictorial world of Marietta Bonnet. It is this joy we find in her landscapes, cityscapes, and in the jazz pictures she often likes to sketch at festivals. Simple, pure joy of life!

Tom Jørgensen, March 2020