Suzanne Benton

Suzanne Benton, Centering, 2022, oil on panel, Neo-Transcendentalism

2022

In this ninth decade of life, and as a working artist for nearly70 years, Suzanne Benton has become interested in the concept of Late Style as described by the literary theorist Edwa...

In this ninth decade of life, and as a working artist for nearly70 years, Suzanne Benton has become interested in the concept of Late Style as described by the literary theorist Edwa...

In this ninth decade of life, and as a working artist for nearly70 years, Suzanne Benton has become interested in the concept of Late Style as described by the literary theorist Edward Said. “Each of us can supply evidence of late works, which crown a lifetime of aesthetic endeavor,” Matisse had it with his renowned paper cuts. While nearly blind, Monet created the water lily paintings as his final legacy to the history of art.  Benton's Late Style arrived as a surprise during the Covid pandemic. The resultant aloneness from sheltering in place brought her to an uncanny level of solitude that only painting could voice. She reached for the purest of colors, and entered a celebratory world to create the Neo-Transcendental paintings titled All About Color. The disappeared narrative came as a surprise. It had been the mainstay of the masks and mask tale performances, monoprints and paintings. This time though, the artist needed to bring a vibrancy to canvas, and to make tangible this sense of sheer essence that had pressed into her inner self in that time of stillness. Well educated in color by John Ferren, the abstract expressionist painter who’d taught the year’s color study at Queen College. The sensitivity developed further through four lengthy art-working journeys to India, starting in 1976-77, continuing with a 1992-1993 Fulbright, and additional South Asia residencies in 1995, and 2011. Those and others in Africa brought an ever more attuned palette to decades of monoprints with Chine collé that featured imagery from world culture, as well as her Americana of 19th and 20th century women writers, educators, suffragists, and feminists. These Late Style artworks explore the cosmic realm. Its deceptive simplicity reminds Benton of Buffie Johnson’s late work. She, an early celebrator of Great Goddess imagery turned to circles in her latter years. similarly, Benton had drawn on rich Goddess imagery since the 1970’s...

In this ninth decade of life, and as a working artist for nearly70 years, Suzanne Benton has become interested in the concept of Late Style as described by the literary theorist Edwa...

Views of Nature 54 is an original, modern art painting from the "Views of Nature" series. The "Views of Nature" series is a collection of small, square 8x8 inch abstract landscape pa...

Views of Nature 78 is an original painting, created with acrylic paint on gallery-wrapped canvas. It has a width of 8 inches and a height of 8 inches with a depth of 1.5 inches (8x8x...

My sunset paintings are about transition, the moment when one thing transforms into another. The day dims, and there is a feeling of loss--another day of your life is gone. But then ...

"Atmospheric ambiguity and a love of structure are long-time preoccupations and both are central to my work. Driven by a persistent curiosity to see where the work will lead me, I wo...