The Night Approaches Painting

Paul Bennett is an international contemporary Fine Artist specialising in exceptional semi-abstract seascape/landscape paintings and also unique portraiture. The two themes are very different in mood and style, but both are made from using a mix of traditional techniques and more unconventional painting methods. Both rely on drawing from memory to create finished work that is abstracted and more expressional than representational. Bennett endeavours to generate a sense of intimacy and isolation while leaving the subject open to interpretation. With the digital age well and truly with us, the advances of visual media means that almost anything is possible within the boundaries of our imagination. It has been Bennett's aim to create work that is most definitely a painting; accomplished by using rich textures, multiple layers, poured paint and brush/palette knife marks. This becomes a way of escaping the everyday, mass produced visuals that we are constantly exposed to and the way in which we now digest and assimilate our visual world. Bennett is a great admirer of photography and photorealism and appreciates the technical ability to produce such works. However, his approach is to record and comment on things that are more than visually apparent: to tease out more than the eye can see, to draw people in and invite them to experience - not just consume - an image.