MIXED MEDIA, PAINTING, sculpture, TEXTILES
Art is integral in my life, making images, and sculpting has become a way of exploring many curiosities and experiences encountered in my life journey. There has not been a time when I have not used art either in relation to work as an art therapist, or as an artist, art processes have aided personal expression and reflection. During my training as an art therapist my work changed dramatically and became much more personal and inclusive of the figure. In my work I like to reference the body. I have lived and trained in the UK most of my life, migrating to Australia in 2021. I am known in the UK for my textile and clay sculptural works. These initial art offerings here in Australia are tentative beginnings in a new place. I am finding my feet as an artist here in this new, wonderful, and exciting place. I am learning anew what being an artist truly means on a daily basis.
MEDIA
Clay, Acrylic Resin, Encaustic Wax and oils and Fibre.
CONTACT DETAILS
Name: Jean Bennett
Address: Lot2/652 Montville-Maleny Rd, Balmoral Ridge, Qld, 4552
Phone: 0472508797
More About You
The way we go through various transitions and experiences in our lives and how our identities shift during these processes is encompassed in the work. The materials I use are also important. I like to use materials and methods that will add additional layers of meaning to the work and create a personal connection between viewers and the artwork. Sculpture, painting, drawing and encaustic work fill me with a sense of accomplishment and integrity, thus proving a most amenable vehicle for translating inner vision to outer reality.
Though I work quite deliberately, consciously employing both traditional and innovative techniques, my unconscious is the undisputed project manager. Grosz’s ideas of the internal and external body are used in that they are inseparable: the internal merging with the external.
The concrete, repetitive nature of the work at times frees my imagination and provides opportunities throughout the process for the materials to dictate in some instances the direction the work takes. I am interested in narratives and stories, and this being implied through my artwork. Stories are like theories, opening up the scars of history, geography: Stories map us.
‘tell me your story and I will come to know my own in new ways’.
The artwork is placed strategically together to evoke multiple possibilities. I believe art is about revealing the hidden. It is a way into other realities and other personalities. It is a way of looking at something differently, a form of intervention. Art is living. It can be breath-taking – it stops us – moving from past to future, whilst disrupting the present. The figurative body speaks of stories untold, of hidden places deep inside. Our stories touch and twine, but they are threads of different hues.
