04-09-2015
Landscapes and Still Life
From April 9th through May 8th, our office gallery welcomes and exhibits new work by William Benson in Landscapes and Still Life.
For the past twenty years, William has been exploring the relationship of two basic elements of visual art: the representational and the abstract. In an effort to harmonize these two seemingly disparate modes of expression, modes which are the inherent fundamentals of painting and modernism, William had found he was also exploring the basis of process and subsequently, time.
"Not everything has already been said using oil paints on canvas, although the discipline seems almost anachronistic these days. If they are teaching representational painting anywhere in the US it is not at Universities but has been relegated to the "Illustration" departments of most Art Schools; the same for representational drawing. My admiration for those "old school" skills has been with me since I was a child and it continues to inspire me technically. My "vision" tries to encompass more than the use of that talent to integrate elements that are associated with "design" but not readily apparent to the casual observer: math, abstraction and the free flow of paint and thinner.
It is hard, as a visual artist, to live in this beautiful area and not be moved and drawn to the landscape. There is, of course, the deeply introspective challenge of interpretation – how can ones vision of this natural beauty be painted in some way that reveals the emotional current that sparked the endeavor. In each of these landscapes I have tried to imbue them with an emotional impression. In some cases that would reveal itself as simply an overall hue or light in an otherwise representational piece and in others, more movement of paint in an abstract fashion – as a way of filtering in levels of information that might not be readily visible.
The still Life paintings in the show reflect that mixture of abstraction and the representational in a slightly different way. "Two Friends" is all about process; the process of beginning with pure canvas, priming, rough mono-chromatic painting, then the finished piece within the suspended frame. "Perry City Rd." also deals with "frame within a frame" concept – the continuation of the image outside the frame, and just one moment in time the artist chose to capture."
For more information, visit William Benson's Facebook page.
For the past twenty years, William has been exploring the relationship of two basic elements of visual art: the representational and the abstract. In an effort to harmonize these two seemingly disparate modes of expression, modes which are the inherent fundamentals of painting and modernism, William had found he was also exploring the basis of process and subsequently, time.
"Not everything has already been said using oil paints on canvas, although the discipline seems almost anachronistic these days. If they are teaching representational painting anywhere in the US it is not at Universities but has been relegated to the "Illustration" departments of most Art Schools; the same for representational drawing. My admiration for those "old school" skills has been with me since I was a child and it continues to inspire me technically. My "vision" tries to encompass more than the use of that talent to integrate elements that are associated with "design" but not readily apparent to the casual observer: math, abstraction and the free flow of paint and thinner.
It is hard, as a visual artist, to live in this beautiful area and not be moved and drawn to the landscape. There is, of course, the deeply introspective challenge of interpretation – how can ones vision of this natural beauty be painted in some way that reveals the emotional current that sparked the endeavor. In each of these landscapes I have tried to imbue them with an emotional impression. In some cases that would reveal itself as simply an overall hue or light in an otherwise representational piece and in others, more movement of paint in an abstract fashion – as a way of filtering in levels of information that might not be readily visible.
The still Life paintings in the show reflect that mixture of abstraction and the representational in a slightly different way. "Two Friends" is all about process; the process of beginning with pure canvas, priming, rough mono-chromatic painting, then the finished piece within the suspended frame. "Perry City Rd." also deals with "frame within a frame" concept – the continuation of the image outside the frame, and just one moment in time the artist chose to capture."
For more information, visit William Benson's Facebook page.