"THE LAYERS ACCUMULATE SLOWLY IN Donnamaria Bruton’s paintings, just as they did in her life. Paint mingles with collage, graphite, and paper, creating visual maps that chart territory between the material and spiritual worlds. These layers tell the story of an artist who understood consciousness itself as her primary medium, revealing ethereal dimensions that stand as both aesthetic achievements and spiritual portals. Ten years after her death in 2012, her 2022 retrospective at the Newport Art Museum, “From Sense to Soul,” marked the first comprehensive examination of her work since her death, prompting overdue reassessment of an artist whose contributions are only now receiving deserved attention.
Bruton worked primarily as a painter and mixed-media artist throughout her life, creating fantastic large-scale canvases that incorporated graphite, acrylic paint, printed papers, ribbon, and collaged imagery alongside sculptural dresses and dolls. Her passing from lung cancer cut short the career of an artist who had quietly shaped both contemporary painting and institutional leadership in New England. The archival materials, family interviews, and institutional records about her life reveal an artist whose influence extended far beyond her own artwork through the students she mentored, the barriers she broke, and the hope she offered for what the study of art could become."
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