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Bruce Lakofka was a multi-talented artist with the eye and hands of an "Old Master" who could and did paint everything he saw in his twentieth and twenty-first century world. His work was mainly representational but he could paint in any style. He was my friend for nearly fifty years. This book is his legacy. Bruce was a little known "undiscovered" artist, known only to a few experts here and there and his appreciative customers. People seeing a Bruce painting on a gallery wall showed the same reaction I've seen on the faces of people walking up to the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time. Bruce is primarily remembered for his Native American themed oil paintings done in the 1990s such as "Spirit of the Full Moon" or "The Last Reservation" which were done in his commercial period. But for many years in his early career, he sold hundreds of large paintings direct to the public at the famous La Cienega Art Mart in Hollywood. There were mostly "happy" paintings of smiling young women, kittens, the Beatles, flower children, and pastorals. Some were more serious such as Vietnam War protestors and our soldiers in Vietnam as well as Biafram refugees. This book is for art students, scholars, and anyone interested in beautiful paintings. Bruce was a person who followed his star and served his artistic muse despite life's bumps along the way. He was a modest and religious person who believed his gifts were God-given.
About the author
Joseph A. Bonelli holds a Bachelors degree in Comparative World Literature from the University of Southern California and a Masters degree in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago. He has worked in policy analysis evaluation and regulatory writing in Washington, DC and for the State of California. He has been a child protective services supervisor, substitute teacher, and medical social worker. He is also the author of the novels Congo Ape Kitabu and The Cassandra Group and the biographies The Caballero from Catalonia, The Life of Juan Duval, and Bruce Lakofka, The People's Artist, the last three from Sunstone Press.
