CHRIS BENNETT
      Artist

PAINTING ANALYSIS

   The basic feeling behind these ‘blue car’ paintings is of
   something happening around 9.30am on a very fresh sunny
   morning. In this particular case we may perhaps ask “what is so
   special for this woman to be fixing her makeup so early in the
   day?” In a profounder sense, this woman is that beautiful
   morning – the sunny morning when the day is ‘putting on its
   face’.

   All the elements in the picture echo her form – the car roof
   shares her shape and the colours are an inverted variant of
   those she is wearing with the windows/eyes of the car sharing
   the colour of her head/soul. The door handles (the ‘hands’ of
   the car) echo the gesture of the woman’s own hands. All this is
   echoed again by the blue sky and deep car-shaped bushes.
   Finally the mirror she holds – is it the woman we see in that
   reflection, or ourselves coming towards her? Is she in fact
   watching us under the pretext of fixing her makeup?

   Thus everything revolves around that delicate gesture of the
   white gloved little finger about to touch the corner of some red
   painted lips – a metaphor for the clean, fresh morning
   approaching the heat of the afternoon of red experience – the
   one colour that is only ‘implied’ in the painting.

   This is what goes through my mind all the time when building
   paintings and they all circle around metaphors like this without
   me being able to help it. Otherwise it’s just pretty pictures…….




   Here is an early stage of 'The Celestial Toymaker'