Artist Statement #4, Semester III

Artist Statement

Cameron Bennett, Group 4

Spring Semester 2011

For me, in the creation of a painting, the end-result is not all that matters; the artist’s gesture, the process of the creation of a work, is an equally important and inseparable part of the equation. In my experience, the limitations which come from working from life call heavily upon my creativity and powers of memory and imagination, moreso than if I were to work from a photograph; photography’s objective recording power somehow diminishes painterly creativity for me. On this note, I find that I often do more interesting work when operating under limited conditions, with less time, or with unfamiliar or difficult materials.

Working as an indexical responder to the visual qualities of nature, not of the photograph, and then personally mediating these responses, I attempt to create figurative paintings which are readable and unreadable, naturalistic and also un-natural, about painting itself, but which can also be viewed through other filters, one of which is the universal human condition.