LandE scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
Paul Bennett
Lives and works in Kendal, Cumbria, United Kingdom
An artist ' s statement
T
he seascape / Landscape paintings created are inspired by memory and experience and are developed using artistic intuition. They are not tied into any specific region or time, they are an eclectic synthesis of place, weather and season. Paul choose ' s to capture and communicate the experience this way as it reflects life with its unceasing process of observing, experiencing, interpreting, storing – and ultimately – reflecting. The result he strives for is a unique and original visual experience that has captured not only the sense of somewhere / sometime, but also the more subtle notion of recollection.
Occasionally Paul refers to photography as a starting point and as a way to engage with the surface and begin the initial mark making process. After this point it is all an abstract interpretation of the memories he has and places he has experienced. This, is all brought together with constant experimentation. The paintings are continuously evolving with the process directly influencing the next work. Oil paint is the medium that plays a big part in capturing the essence of a faded memory and lends itself nicely to the way he paints. It works well when applied thickly and can create great depth when worked into the surface sparingly, which leaves previous layers partially exposed. The paint is applied in this way to give the artwork itself a narrative and history, where the process of its creation can be glimpsed at in places – not dissimilar to the way in which the memory deals with the hazy recollection of a place once visited.
Paul Bennett was born in a non-descript town in Berkshire in 1975. He graduated from the Surrey Institute of Art and Design in 2001, with a Ba( Hons) in Fine Art Painting, but sees himself as self taught. He now lives in Cumbria, after having spent nearly two decades in West London. With global representation, international fine artist Paul Bennett specialises in contemporary semi-abstract seascapes and landscapes. The mood and style endeavours to generate a sense of intimacy and isolation while leaving the subject open to interpretation. The intention is to create from memory to produce finished work that is abstracted and more expressional than representational. It has been Bennett ' s aim to create work that is most definitely painted; accomplished by using rich textures, multiple layers, poured paint and brush / palette knife marks. This becomes a way of escaping the everyday, mass produced visuals that we are constantly exposed to and the way in which we now digest and assimilate our visual world. His approach is to record and comment on things that are more than visually apparent: to tease out more than the eye can see, to draw people in and invite them to experience – not just consume – an image. His work is in private and public collections worldwide.
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