Bonnie Parkinson was born in December 1941 in London, Ontario. Her father, Harry Cluff, had shown promise as a young art student at H. B. Beal Secondary School in London, Ontario and Parkinson’s father took a great interest in her early artistic talent and was very supportive when she entered the Special Art Programme at Beal, where she showed an innate artistic ability.
Parkinson won the Eva Bradshaw Award and a summer scholarship to Meinzinger Art School in Detroit, Michigan at the end of Grade 12. In her last year of the Special Art Programme, she was chosen by The London Free Press art department manager to work in the paper’s art department part-time after school.
After graduation in 1960, she was hired by the paper as a full-time fashion artist. Still very interested in painting, Parkinson was featured in a show entitled “Artists of our Region” at the Crouch branch of the London Public Library and was chosen to be in the juried Western Ontario show at the library system’s Central branch (then located on Queens Avenue). She was noted as “a person to watch” in The London Free Press art review by art critic Lenore Crawford...........click on button to read biography
Parkinson won the Eva Bradshaw Award and a summer scholarship to Meinzinger Art School in Detroit, Michigan at the end of Grade 12. In her last year of the Special Art Programme, she was chosen by The London Free Press art department manager to work in the paper’s art department part-time after school.
After graduation in 1960, she was hired by the paper as a full-time fashion artist. Still very interested in painting, Parkinson was featured in a show entitled “Artists of our Region” at the Crouch branch of the London Public Library and was chosen to be in the juried Western Ontario show at the library system’s Central branch (then located on Queens Avenue). She was noted as “a person to watch” in The London Free Press art review by art critic Lenore Crawford...........click on button to read biography
