Stefan Bönsch
Something about me
I was born in Riedenburg in Bavaria in 1958, but grew up in the Rhineland near Bonn. I started drawing and painting at an early age. My family had several role models as artists, both on my mother’s Hungarian side and on my father’s German side, who inspired me in my childhood to produce countless pictures. Later, at grammar school, art lessons were among my favourite lessons. Because I was fascinated by nature from an early age, as a teenager I used to wander through the fields and forests in our immediate neighbourhood in the Siebengebirge mountains with my old binoculars whenever I could.
Looking back today, I can’t answer the question of why I studied forestry and not art. Thanks to my professional training, however, I have travelled to many places in North Africa, south-western and south-eastern Europe and in Germany that I have fond memories of. And now I have been living in Hungary intermittently since 2002 and am actively involved in painting!
The development
Through a cousin in Hungary, the drawing of a roaring red deer stag came into the hands of Csergezán Pál (†), a Hungarian artist whom I hold in high esteem. I am still very proud of his appreciative dedication to my sketch. His encouragement to utilise my talent and work with it still spurs me on today. By coincidence and detours, I came into contact with the Artists for Nature Foundation (ANF) in a later phase of my career and got to know great artistic personalities such as John Busby, Great Britain, or Wolfgang Weber, Germany, to name just a few.
They impressed me afterwards, but because I was busy elsewhere in my career, they only became important for my artistic development later on.
Hungary
At the beginning of the 2000s I came to Hungary, my mother’s homeland, where I took on a new professional challenge. After my professional commitment ended, the opportunity arose to take up painting again and to devote myself intensively to it. To make sure that this would not be an adventure, I sought advice from the wonderful John Busby (†) and here in Hungary from my friend Róbert Muray (†). They encouraged me in my decision and so it began. In 2014 I decided to return to Germany for family reasons, where I stayed until 2021.
During this time I was only able to pursue painting now and then due to my commitments and external circumstances. At the end of 2021 I was able to return to Hungary and have lived in Somogy County south of Lake Balaton ever since. From the very beginning I sought direct contact with the motifs. Just as I used to be outdoors out of love for nature, I can now combine this with painting. Today I smile when I look at my very first sketches, which I painted in situ in front of the motif. Back then they filled me with pride and joy, today they mark a beginning. Nowadays, nature or animal painting is no longer the only subject. When I was still living in Budapest, I regularly attended the Ferenczy István art school, where I studied portrait and nude painting with great enthusiasm and joy. I miss those times very much now, but the friendships I made back then still last to this day. And buildings, such as old and partly dilapidated former granaries or small, thatched wine press houses in my area, are increasingly arousing my interest as motifs.
Exhibitions and other activities
I had my first solo exhibitions in the mid-2000s, in 2007 at the annual meeting of the Budapest Cultural Club at Count Mihály Jankovich Bésán’s and in 2008 in the “Green Gallery” of the Hungarian Ministry of Environment and Water Management, Budapest. Further exhibitions followed in 2010 at the “Pannonian BirdExperience”, Illmitz, Neusiedler See, Austria or in 2013 in the gallery of the “Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT)”, Slimbridge, England. In 2019, the “Tweed Art” gallery in Peebles, Scotland showed a larger selection of my works in a solo exhibition. From 2010 I exhibited at the “British Birdfair” in Rutland, England.
Here in Hungary I had further opportunities to show my pictures to the public, such as in the “Ari Kupsus” gallery, Budapest or at the annual exhibitions of the Hungarian Society for Hunting Culture, VKE. Several times I was represented with a selection of my paintings at the annual exhibition of the “Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA)” in the renowned “Mall Galleries” in London. From 2006 onwards I was invited several times to the “Seabird Drawing Week” in North Berwick and Dunbar, Scotland, which was initiated by John Busby. As a lecturer, I led a week-long course on animal painting at the Hohenaschau Summer Academy in Bavaria in 2013. In the meantime, many of my works have found a new home and are in private ownership.