Amy Bennett is an American painter represented by the Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, California, the Miles McEnery Gallery in New York, and the Galleri Magnus Karlsson in Stockholm.
Wiki / Biography
Amy Bennett was born on June 26, 1977 (aged 44, in 2021) in Portland, Oregon. Her zodiac sign is Cancer. She grew up in Maine, the most northeastern state in the United States. As a child, she played with the Fisher Price playset from the 1970s, which developed her interest in miniature models and led her to become a painter. In an interview she said,
I played with Fisher Price city / dwellers elements from the 1970s: house, school, barn, garage, etc. And I played a role with Barbies. The way I played with 3D worlds as a kid is the same way I make art now. “
In 1999, she received a BFA from the University of Hartford, Connecticut, and in 2002, she received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She took additional art courses at St. Edmund’s Hall, the University of Oxford in England, the Pratt Institute in New York, the New York Studio School in New York, and the NY University of Georgia Art School in Cortona in Italy. After pursuing her painting career for a while in Brooklyn, she moved to Cold Spring, while working in Beacon, NY.
Physical appearance
Height (approx): 5 ′ 4 ″
Hair color: Blond
Eye colour: Newborn gray
Family
She is married and has two sons.
Career
Her work focuses on themes such as transition, aging, isolation and loss. The New York-based artist is intrigued by the fragility of relationships and the awkwardness of people trying to coexist and relate to each other. First, Bennett creates miniature 3D models, which serve as a still for his detailed narrative paintings. She modifies the miniature 3D models according to her imagination to create different scenes for her painting. His work in ‘Against the Wall’ from the Neighbors collection (2006), shows a man pressing a young woman against a wall, holding her high above the ground. A sense of fleeting voyeurism is perceived in the paintings in the collection. Voyeurism refers to the practice of obtaining sexual pleasure by watching others nude or engaging in sexual activity.
‘Against the wall’ from the Voisins collection (2006)
In 2015, she became a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. The same year, she received a scholarship from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In 2016, she created a miniature 3D model of a landscape illustrating the transformation of a rural area into a bustling city. Using the 3D model, she created a series of paintings “Small Changes Every Day”, which were exhibited at the Richard Heller Gallery. Showcasing different stages in a city’s growth, the collection explored humans’ changing relationship with the environment over time and the American dream of taming nature.
An image showing the 3D miniature and paintings from the Small Changes Every Day collection (2016)
Subsequently, she received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. NYFA Artist Fellowship awards $ 7,000 to artists from fifteen different disciplines. She is a recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio program, which grants non-habitable studio space without rent to 17 visual artists for one-year residencies in DUMBO, Brooklyn. She is also the recipient of several prestigious scholarships and scholarships, including the Deutsche Bank scholarship, the Smack Mellon Studio program, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant, the Prince of Wales scholarship in Normandy, France, and the the New York Academy of Art. Bennett’s 2019 collection of paintings titled “Nuclear Family” showcased the vulnerabilities and anxieties of parenthood and marriage. Intimate moments between the characters provide glimpses of other lives in domestic interiors seen through a window.
A painting from the collection ‘Small Changes Every Day’ (2016)
In 2021, she illustrated the cover of the novel Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.
Cover of the novel Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2021)
Prizes, distinctions, achievements
- Rosenthal Family Foundation Prize in Painting (2011)
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award (2020)
- Felicia C. Miller Award for Artistic Excellence (1999)
- Barbara Podorowsky Memorial Award for Excellence in Painting (1999)
