|
Harry Bennett
July 12 - August 5, 2008
More About the Artist:
Harry Bennett
Top
| Back
| Home
For Immediate Release:
Harry and Friends nods farewell to a painting giant
The studio is bare. A whiff of linseed oil and turpentine, a paint-daubed floor, an air of waiting…but the artist
doesn't tread there any more. The brushes, rags and palette knives are packed; the easels, racks and storage
chests sold or given away. No model will eagerly climb the stairs to pose in the chair and inspire a
masterpiece.
Harry Bennett, a major art figure of the region, is moving to the east coast to live near his family, but leaving
his heart behind in Astoria. And friends, fans and collectors are already feeling the hole he leaves in
theirs.
The nationally known and internationally published artist and illustrator is the focus of RiverSea Gallery's
upcoming art exhibit "Harry and Friends."
The show will also feature painters Ginny Sampson and Bobbie Jansen, who have been close to Bennett for many
years. This rare, career-defining show will offer a stunning retrospective of many of Bennett's important
works spanning the last twenty years of Bennett's life in Astoria. Jansen and Sampson will exhibit new
paintings.
Bennett spent much of his early career shuttling back and forth between New York and his home in Connecticut.
Bennett's paintings of women had caught the eye of publishing execs, and he quickly became one of the
most sought after gothic romance illustrators.
"Because I could paint a woman so well I was never without work," says Bennett. In fact, he painted over
800 covers through the 60's and 70's, including some for such famous authors as Mary Stewart, whose
Bennett-bedecked books sold over a million copies.
Bennett's work also appeared on the covers of novels by Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt just to name a few.
The covers were works of art, and are collected to this day. As a simple internet search will reveal, even worn
gothic paperbacks with Harry Bennett cover art get special notice. Bennett painted them all large, so he could
stay loose and fast.
"I like to bounce off the easel, I can't do that when I'm standing still," he
says.
Not all of Bennett's work in those decades was destined for mass market paperbacks. He also caught the attention
of the mainstream art world. The New York Society of Illustrators awarded him a bronze medal for the drawings
he created to illustrate a boxed, collectors' edition of Dante's Divine Comedy published in 1966.
But after
years catering to the needs of publishing giants Simon and Schuster, Western Printing, and Avon Press, the
artist was spent and looking for a new muse and a new beginning.
Bennett migrated to Oregon in 1986. When a
friend brought him out to Astoria he was instantly hooked, and he moved here in 1989.
"When I got here,
everything became alive again," Bennett says. "It was flowing like crazy, I couldn't stop painting."
The move was a significant turning point in his career. His style became even looser, more abstract,
and more spontaneous.
"When one explodes into expressionistic painting it's almost like another person
comes out," he says. "I even surprised myself."
And it wasn't just the place, which enchanted him, it
was also the people.
"What makes this area great is the people. Everyone I ran into had a smile," Bennett
says. "Boy did that feel good! I never really got that in Connecticut."
As the saying goes, you get what
you give, and Bennett's youthful vigor attracted many fans and many believers. Despite his move to a smaller
market, when Bennett arrived in Oregon, his paintings sold like hotcakes.
Bennett estimates that he's created
hundreds of oil paintings here in Astoria, inspired by the energy of the northwest coast, its people and
places. He is particularly entranced by the ever-changing quality of the light here, the moodiness of the
weather, and by what he likes to call "water energy."
Several of the paintings in the show delve into Bennett's fascination with Antigone, the daughter of
Oedipus and subject of the great, Greek tragedy by Sophocles. He spent a year or so in the mid-nineties
turning out one painting after another based on that tragic story, caught up in the passion of the
drama as if it was freshly wrought.
"I got hooked on that story," says Bennett. "That beautiful, beautiful suffering woman. I couldn't
get her out of my head."
After almost twenty years in Astoria, Bennett will soon return to the East
Coast to be closer to his extended family. Bennett's son Thomas is also a nationally recognized painter.
The younger Bennett calls Brooklyn home, but also shows his work at RiverSea Gallery.
Large-scale oil
paintings of reclining nudes, gorgeous women, and pulsating landscapes have become the focus of Bennett's
work. The structures and figures in his oils bend and sway with a fervent intensity. His hand, always
searching but skillful, reveals an unmistakably vibrant style.
The endless surprises in painting fascinate Bennett, compelling him to paint the same models or
landscapes several times. His long curving brush strokes push against each other and vibrate across
the canvas. Faces, fingers, and entire bodies are elongated, twisted, and knotted, yet somehow they
merge to form alluring and sensual figures that slither across the canvas. Wildly, often wittily,
distorted human figures emerge from waves of thick pigment.
"I don't distort people - I distort the painting," says Bennett. Calling the distortion "the
way I feel it," he says that such emphasis reveals the mystery and excitement he feels about
painting and life.
Bennett developed his own "black oil" based on a technique use by Peter Paul Rubens in the 16th
century. Bennett's experiments with linseed oil, red lead, and wax were inspired by Rubens' startling
color and skin tones.
Always a gentleman, Bennett's quick wit and age-defying energy have often set him in relief to his
surroundings, and younger artists have often sought him out for guidance and mentorship.
Two of those
artists will show alongside Bennett in the exhibit. Both Bobbie Jansen and Ginny Sampson count Bennett
as an influence and inspiration.
The three became acquainted when Bennett first came to Oregon and
landed in Corvallis. Bobbie Jansen and Ginny Sampson attended an art class he taught at Oregon State.
There was an instant bonding, and when Bennett moved to Astoria, Jansen and Sampson would often visit
just to catch up, and of course, to paint. As their friendship grew, many convivial hours were spent
over the years painting on location at various spots along the north coast.
Bobbie Jansen is a painter of haunting intensity. Crows, dolls, chairs, even dismembered mannequins
take on a surreal level of meaning under Jansen's skillful treatment of light and shadow. Because she
believes that everyday objects communicate something about who we are, such items are central to her
art. Birds, both caged and free, have a special place in her art. Even the simplest chair or candle
assumes what she calls a "symbolic potency."
Her still life and roomscape paintings show deceptively claustrophobic interiors that at the same time
reveal an endlessly expanding exterior. In some of her paintings, a single bright flower or figure seems
to float against a background of shimmering dark shades. Objects are at times isolated, multiplied,
intertwined, whole or fractured, veiled and disintegrating. Although there is a certain calm and
order in her work, she chooses to begin her paintings mostly unplanned, "to allow space for the
unconscious suggestion."
Jansen makes her home in the countryside near Albany, Oregon. Her work has been exhibited in
galleries and museums in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, New York, and
select locations around the world. She was featured in the 25th edition of "New American Paintings,"
published in 2000.
Ginny Sampson is less well-known to local audiences but she packs no less of a
primal art punch. Sampson has been living and teaching in Malaysia, Indonesia and China since 1997,
and this new series of paintings titled, "Conversations That Matter," celebrates her transition back
to life in Oregon.
Sampson's paintings evoke a highly emotional quality, and use figures to explore relationships. Faces
are often the focus of this artist's energy, and they can range from serene, to contemplative, to
tortured. The vibrancy of color and lucid quick marks create a sense of impermanence or urgency, while
the seductive softness invites a kind of meditative reflection.
"Throughout this past year of significant change, conversations led me between the old and the new,
and facilitated the reclamation of NOW," writes the artist. She spent the past year moving from Kuala
Lumpur to Shanghai, struggling to learn Chinese, watching a child graduate college, and finally returning
to Oregon. "I processed these changes as reinvigorating my sense of self," she says. "As I engaged with
new friends and ran thoughts past old friends, this series captured the value of those conversations."
Sampson's artwork was exhibited in many solo and group shows in the Northwest throughout the 1990's, and
in recent years has been shown in New York and San Francisco as well as in Malaysia.
Bennett is looking forward to catching up with his friends and bidding farewell to the colleagues and
collaborators that have journeyed through this expressionistic adventure with him, side by side.
With
a smile upon his face, he recently mused, "there may be a lot of tears."
Although the subjects of
Bennett's paintings have often changed and evolved, one common thread has appeared in many of his works.
He seated many of his models is an upright antique chair, and the chair, purchased by a local collector,
will make its first appearance in public as part of this exhibition.
You just may want to take a seat
in it, just to feel close to the genius and energy of one of the North Coast's true masters of the brush,
for just one last time.
Top
| Back
| Home
|
