KIM BENSON STATEMENT
2020

My process has become a type of chaos management. I strive to create a painting that plays with the viewer’s comprehension of space, form, and illusion by complicating the visual pathways. I am a materialist who is continually fascinated with the processes of painting. I utilize a myriad of different techniques including but not limited to brushing, spraying, sanding, scraping, rubbing and printing. Along with the mechanics I am equally interested in the history of painting. Currently, I am looking back to the 17th century Dutch still-life genre, in particular the paintings by Maria van Oosterwijck, for both their array of metaphors and formal configurations, and even further back to the Etruscan tomb paintings from 4th century BCE for their rich and distressed surfaces suggesting ideas of loss, decay, and transformation. By referencing these sources and delving deep into process, I consider my own conceptual concerns in order to build my personal painting language. Although, these themes might at first seem disparate, they are deep rooted, and offer an endless array of problems to discover.