Bony Ramírez

Self-taught artist Bony Ramírez paints large-scale figures inspired by his childhood memories of the Dominican Republic, cartoonish children’s illustrations, and the anatomical inaccuracies of the Italian Mannerist painters. Ramírez paints his distorted figures on paper using acrylic wash, colored pencils, and oil pastels before cutting them out and pasting them to wood panels decorated with backgrounds painted in acrylics. The characters in his narrative paintings often possess outsized eyes and body parts, as in The Last Day, Ultimo Día En El Campo (2021), in which a boy walks on distended and discolored feet, holding a tire with clubbed fingers. In addition to his painting practice, Ramírez also produces figurative sculptures with clay, resin, and other materials. The New Jersey–based artist has been exhibiting his work since 2014, and participated in a group show at the Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019, for which he received a Visitors Choice Award.