DVAA Member since 2026

Chelsea Bonham

WEBsite: chelseabonham.com

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About:

Chelsea Bonham was born and raised in Jonesboro, Arkansas. She received her BFA at West Chester University with a minor in Art History, and MFA at Tyler School of Art and Architecture. At an early age she was fascinated by the visual language of cartoons and comic books, which is reflected in her own visual language. Also reflected in her imagery is her inner world she created as a child during dissociation episodes resulted from trauma and PTSD. She works primarily in pen and mixed media on paper. Her work has been exhibited in 215/610 Contemporary Exhibition, Chester County Art Association, Center for Women and Gender Equity, and Manifest Gallery, among others.

Her work engages with themes of the complexity of time, dissociation, trauma from a child's point of view, and the shifting properties of identity. She is passionate about the rife of abuse to children, it's something everyone has either experienced or knows someone that has been affected. Through her work she aims to spread awareness and force people to think about it.

She currently lives and works in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Artist Statement:

Chelsea Bonham’s work navigates the fragile yet tangible threads of time, the dissociation of abused children, the loss of time and place, the absences of our past, which become present when observed. She aims to bridge the gap between the tangible and the ethereal and bring awareness to child abuse. Analogous to drawing lines on a door frame to mark a child’s growth, she works mainly with pen and ink, her obsessive line-making a deliberate preservation of memory. Her work contains themes of childhood trauma, death, ghosts, fantastical creatures and objects that create her personal mythology. Her illustrative style, coupled with figures seemingly in motion, creates a collision between language and imagery. Repressed feelings hide in shy creatures and objects located in spaces that represent the broken body. Time cannot contain our lived experiences; they live within us demanding attention.