Bonnie Dupree is a lifelong artist who has nurtured creativity in many forms throughout her life, including knitting, sewing, weaving, beading, macramé and drawing and most continuously, painting.

A collection of Dupree’s landscape paintings is currently on display in the Homer Public Library’s Fireplace Lounge. Inspired by her life in Alaska over the past 47 years, this body of work melds nostalgia with modern day and themes of everyday life and adventure.

Her pastel painting “The Homestead” represents the homestead she and her husband, Atz Kilcher, own on West Hill and portrays the view she has while sitting near the pond on the property. In the background, on the left side of the painting is a house partially obscured by large spruce trees and on the right, a couple of older log buildings. While the structures are darker colors and set in a haze of mist, the foreground includes several large trees and an explosion of fireweed in full bloom, depicted in bright pinks and reds.

“In this painting, the older buildings are reminiscent of times past, while the fireweed provides a more ‘now’ energy,” she said. “I wanted this piece to have a feeling of nostalgia meets now, yesterday meets today.”

“Invitation From an Alaskan Spruce Forest” is an acrylic painting Dupree created in 2022 after a hunting trip on Kodiak Island. Painted in fall colors of deeper oranges and greens, it shows a trail winding through a stand of Spruce trees.

“I wanted this one to have a more dreamy feel to it,” she said. “That feeling of walking into a forest where things feel a bit surreal, like you’re leaving the present and stepping into an ancient past.”

“Homestead Sunrise” is a panoramic acrylic painting of the sun coming up over Kachemak Bay with the long rays of light reflecting on the water and a small, rustic cabin nestled into the scene. The mountains are painted in varying shades of blue that accentuate the different peaks and while the colors of the bay mimic those of the mountains, yellows and oranges of the light of the sunrise blend in and blue-purple lupine flowers rise up in the foreground to meet the light.

“The theme of looking at the mountains across the bay and a sunrise or moon rise view from a cabin is a recurring theme in my paintings,” Dupree said. “This painting is intended to juxtapose the small cabin and the vastness of Alaska. The cabin is old Alaska and brings with it in this scene a feeling of isolation and at the same time, looking out across the beauty of the bay and the mountains.”

Dupree views her style as impressionistic and a work in progress as she evolves personally and creatively now in her 70s. In this way, nostalgia again meets modern day as she paints today what she did, saw or felt “yesterday.”

“My hope is that when people look at my paintings they will be inspired to have or remember their own adventures,” she said. “Since I’m getting older, the memories are where it’s at for me right now. More memories of my adventures than having new adventures.”

Working from The Yurt Gallery, a yurt that is her working studio and gallery space on the couple’s property, she paints both from photographs and memory and often works on more than one painting at a time.

“I like to let the brush do the work rather than trying to make things look exactly like they look in real life or like a photo,” she said. “I strive for atmosphere and to evoke a certain mood with the colors, textures and light.”

Though she has created numerous paintings throughout the years, Dupree shies away from pursuing galleries and other public spaces where she might exhibit and sell her work and prefers to paint from home and sell online. Besides the library, she has in the past shown her paintings seasonally at Wild Edge Espresso on the Homer Spit and at the former K Bay Caffe.

“I’m a pretty quiet person,” she said. “My friends call me a closet artist.”

For the past several years, Dupree and Kilcher have divided their time between Alaska and Arizona. On the tiny patio of their home in a small town in the Southwest, she continues to capture the landscape around her, painting the deep red and gold hues of the area rather than the blues and pinks inspired locally.

More creatively productive at different times in her life than other times, Dupree is these days committed to more purposefully making her creativity a priority.

“I want to get clearer about taking time to seek out inspiration and paint more,” she said. “I’ve stopped and started for years and it takes more to get going when there’s been lots of time in between painting. I don’t want to be sloppy with my paintings, but have time to relax and concentrate.”

Raised in the Adirondack area of New York State, Dupree and her sister Marilyn (a well-known Alaska doll maker) are both lifelong artists whose mom taught them knitting and sewing when they were just children.

“My first knitting needles were a size 8 plastic yellow, my first yarn was a ball of bright red and the first thing I ever knit was a pair of slippers for my dolls,” she said.

With her childhood allowances, Dupree bought How To books on sewing and later, beading and macramé.

“I remember putting a quarter in an envelope and mailing it to a company,” she said. “From them I’d get little bits and pieces of scrap fabrics and buttons and I’d cut them and put them together and with my mom’s small Singer sewing machine, make doll clothes.”

In high school, Dupree took drawing and painting classes, with pastels as her primary medium and creating pieces with themes she saw around her — forests and cabins nestled in forests.

When she moved to Homer in 1977, a 24-year- old seeking adventure, she was a Spit Rat for a summer, working the slime line off-loading salmon from boats. While sitting on a log by the harbor waiting for the boats to come in, she taught other women to knit or she painted. Later, she deck handed for a commercial fisherman harvesting shrimp in the Cook Inlet, putting her paints and brushes away for the summer, but keeping her knitting needles out, making sweaters for family and friends.

In 1979, married to Homer community member Doug Schwiesow, she and her friend Aggie Blackmer opened a yarn shop. The two ran the business for seven years and during this time Dupree taught herself to weave, using the color of grasses to correlate to yarn and selling her fiber arts at Ptarmigan Arts.

“Mostly I wove clothing, combining weaving and knitting into sweaters,” she said.

She also made clothes for her three children. Once the yarn shop closed, she took classes from local artists, including drawing from Brad Hughes, who nurtured her portrait drawings, and painting from Karla Freeman, who encouraged her landscape paintings. Returning to school to study dental hygiene, she did this work for 15 years in Homer while drawing, painting, weaving and teaching herself to bead and macramé.

In 2009, Dupree and Kilcher married and the two participated in the Discovery Channel’s taping of “Alaska, the Last Frontier,” the couple being two of eight characters whose lives were followed during the 11-year-long seasonal reality show.

“That was fun and creative and certainly different than anything I’d ever done before,” she said.

Embracing her husband’s musical life, Dupree performed alongside him onstage, singing at venues around the state, including locally at Concert on the Lawn. They created an album together called “Good Old Fashioned Waves,” which plays on Spotify.

“I never thought of myself as a singer and still don’t,” she said. “We did that for a couple of years together. Atz continues on, but I’ve put that behind me.”

Open to new experiences and adventure throughout her life, Dupree continues to nurture her creativity through the ebbs and flows of her personal evolution — on the one hand slowing down in seeking adventures and on the other, eager to continue pursuing her painting.

Dupree’s landscape paintings are on display through August in the library’s Fireside Lounge and seasonally in the Stoked Beekeeping Honey Gallery at 2102 Sterling Highway. Her work can also be found on Instagram, bonbee.dupree where appointments can be made to visit The Yurt Gallery.

Homer artist Bonnie Dupree paints on the Homer Spit beach during the summer of 2023 in Homer, Alaska. Photo by Alice Porter

“Invitation from an Alaskan Spruce Forest” is an acrylic painting by Bonnie Dupree on display through August 2024, in the Homer Public Library Fireplace Lounge in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Bonnie Dupree

“Our Bay in June” is an acrylic painting by Bonnie Dupree on display at the Homer Public Library through August 2024, in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Bonnie Dupree

”The Homestead” is a pastel painting by Bonnie Dupree on display through August in her exhibit at the Homer Public Library Fireplace Lounge in Homer, Alaska. Photo by Christina Whiting