Milton
1918-2010. Formerly of Stratford, CT
In the 1960s he began recording memories in small oil scenes on the back of clear glass, which protects the painting. He was a sailor, oysterman and then master of one of the last commercial sailing ships plying NY Harbor and the CT coast. He traveled up and down the New England coast, which provided many visual memories. He painted everything from bucolic rural scenes to busy urban vistas churning with activity. Working without instruction, he mastered the technique of painting with the details in the foreground painted first, the background last. His style is semi-primitive, finely detailed, featuring rural New England scenes. One is of the historic National Building that still stands at the gateway to Westport, created in 1873. His work has won awards and has been acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of American Folk Art in NY, the Grand Palais and the Henri Rousseau Museum in Paris.
A native of Connecticut, Bond grew up assisting his father, Captain Ashabel Bond, who owned the Bond & Currier fleet on Long Island Sound, in the operation and sailing of four sailing and three steam vessels. Their landing place was the still famous Bond’s Dock at Stratford. He is descended from Sir William Bond, who in England in the 1500’s built the largest ship of the fleet of Henry VIII. A self-taught artist, he painted the bygone scenes of cities, towns, and the sea and lives along the edge of the Housatonic River.
For his reverse glass paintings, he worked in a mirror world in fine detail with acrylic, ink, and metallic foil, giving a 3D luminosity to the exposed glass side. He has created over 1,500 paintings and been featured at the Museum of American Folk Art in NYC; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London; the Grand Palais, Paris, France; the John Judkyn Museum of American Art, in Bath, England; and the NY Historical Assoc., Cooperstown. Reproductions of Bond’s paintings can be found in many books of Connecticut art, and on covers of Only In Bridgeport, An Illustrated History of the Park City, by Lennie Grimaldi, and In Pursuit of Paradise: A History of Stratford, by Louis G. Knapp. CT. Gov. John Rowland, on the occasion of Bond's retrospective 1998 exhibit at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, issued a Proclamation declaring the artist’s 80th birthday, March 5, 1998, as "Milton Bond Day."
Sue
Her subjects are Americana-style country paintings, seascapes, iconic NY and Westport scenes and the Eiffel Tower. She learned the technique of painting on glass from her father, Milton Bond, who was one of the foremost reverse glass artists in the U.S. She enjoys working with this medium and says the glass makes the colorful shades of paint uniquely vibrant. A Connecticut native, Sue is also a published children's book illustrator for CT author Thomas Jacobson.