Bani Le Kinnison is a midwestern painter currently working and exhibiting in Iowa City.  She is an artist driven more by her inner visions than painterly fashions or trends.  Her work is evocative and tells stories that linger in memory long after the first viewing.  She creates dream-like images with precision and clarity in a style described as neo-surrealism or stylized realism.  Her large acrylics offer the viewer a restful respite from reality, whether in the form of a glimpse at a visionary vista, into the corners of a dark foreboding city, or across the vast beauty of an Iowa sky-scape. They are images that people can not only live with, but enter into like a beautiful mysterious refuge.  Art has always been a part of Bani's life: she was painting and drawing soon after she learned to walk and talk. Her artistic talent won her a scholarship to Cornell where she graduated with honors in 1997. She draws her inspiration from the world around her, her travels, other artists such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, as well as Edward Hopper, Tamara De Lempicka, and Maxfield Parrish.

G a l l e r y

They Were Just Around the Corner