You will either love the art of Carol Bennett or be turned off by it, says Barry Shapiro, owner of the gallery where the Vero artist’s work is currently on display.
“There’s no in between,” Shapiro says.
Shapiro, owner of Lighthouse Art & Framing, believes Bennett’s paintings are “very undervalued.” They are also often misunderstood.
“Carol hasn’t been around that long. She doesn’t have a big reputation,” he says. “As people start to recognize the talent, there’s going to be more of a demand.”
Bennett’s acrylic paintings have been catching gallery visitors off guard.
“Nobody’s walking in and going, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Carol elicits a very strong reaction from the viewer,” Shapiro says. “People walk in and go, ‘Oh my God! Look at that!’ Or else they walk in and they just don’t get it.”
Bennett’s paintings combine a rudimentary drawing style, bright colors and time-honored themes that invariably manage to look charmingly fresh under her brush. Depending on whom you talk to, her style of art might be called “naïve,” “intuitive” or “outsider.”
But Bennett does not attach any label to her art. When asked to describe her style, Bennett has a two-word response: “Simple and hopeful.”
By definition, intuitive art (the term “naïve” is considered by some to be pejorative) is made by someone with little or no formal art training whose work stands on the outskirts of officially recognized culture.
Intuitive painting tends to be unsophisticated in design and drawing, vivid in color, and blissfully unconcerned with the artistic trickery used to create an illusionary space on a two-dimensional plane. Intuitive artists eschew linear perspective and the grayed colors that imply distance. Their paintings are on, and about, the picture surface.
That’s Bennett all over. Take, for example, her painting, “Dazed Fish” in the exhibition. Measuring 48 x 26 inches, the painting features hundreds of small red, blue and yellow fish swimming amid plants in aqua blue water. An ultramarine border hems in the composition from all sides, giving the scene the look of a tropical aquarium rather than the open sea. A myriad of tiny bubbles, drawn on the painting’s surface with pen and white India ink, ensures that the tank is well aerated.
Fish are one of the artist’s favorite subjects, and there are three fish pictures in the show. Bennett says her husband of 48 years, Richard, recently told her he was tired of fish, and told her, “Do something else.” But Bennett demurs.
“I think if you like to do something you should continue to do it until you get bored with it,” she says.
In any case, Bennett’s fish are popular with the art-buying public. A couple years ago, the first painting Bennett sold at the Vero Beach Art Club’s annual “Art by the Sea” exhibition featured fish.
Bennett and her husband settled in Vero Beach in 2003 after Richard retired from the Department of Defense, where he worked as a drug and alcohol addiction counselor. Stationed in Mannheim, Germany, the Bennetts traveled extensively during the 14 years they lived overseas.
Carol Bennett traces her interest in art to her childhood in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Each Christmas Bennett’s mother would let her paint a holiday picture on the mirror in the family living room, and when she was older, Bennett won a case of fruit-flavored soda pop in a painting contest. Her entry was a bunch of grapes.
As an adult, Bennett did not make a real commitment to her art until after she settled in Vero Beach.
“When I came here I dabbled a little bit, but nothing serious,” she says.
Bennett had lived here about five years when she met some people who were taking classes at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. Her interest was piqued, she says.
“I wanted to learn how to paint correctly. How to use paint, how to construct a picture,” she says.
“Simple things like that that you probably learn in art school but that I never did. I’m not really a good student. I didn’t like school. It didn’t appeal to me.”
She attended quite a few classes taught by different teachers at the museum. Although she didn’t see eye to eye with all of them, Bennett says she learned something from each one. At first, Bennett felt like the ugly duckling when she compared her abilities with those of other students.
“I feel like I draw like Bob Dylan sings,” she says. “A little flat.”
The teacher who responded positively to Bennett’s art early on was Kim Weissenborn. She recognized that what Bennett thought was “weird” and “different” about her work was exactly what made it unique.
“She has this way of seeing that not many people do,” says Weissenborn. “She has an innate way of composing that is just beautiful.”
And while Weissenborn admits that Bennett does not having the drafting skills of a Michaelangelo, she says that Bennett doesn’t need them to get her point across.
“I’m almost afraid to encourage her to learn how to draw because it might ruin her. I have nightmares about it,” Weissenborn says, with an uneasy laugh.
One of Bennett’s paintings in the Lighthouse gallery exhibition, “La Rochelle,” is a case in point.
It is a picture of eight racing yachts cutting through the water on a breezy day. A generous peppering of blue, sienna and black dots on its surface makes the painting fairly quiver with energy.
Anyone – any adult, that is – can tell that the forms in the painting represent sailboats. Leave it to a child, however, to give Bennett’s open-ended depictions an alternate reading. A 10-year-old boy interpreted “La Rochelle” as a painting of eight upright vacuum cleaners sprinting across a shaggy blue carpet.
Bennett takes the misunderstanding in stride. She is used to children approaching her art in their own way. A couple years ago, she says, a four-month-old baby in its mother’s arms became enamored of one of her small fish paintings in a local arts and crafts show.
“The baby was laughing and the hands were going – you know how little kids are when they’re happy,” says Bennett.
When its mother moved away from the picture, the child quieted down. When she moved close to the picture, the infant connoisseur became giddy all over again. The young mother finally purchased the painting.
Among the varied subjects in the current painting show are a colorful rooster, two still lifes, the outdoor market in Mannheim, Germany, the Amalfi Coast, two paintings inspired respectively by a Cezanne landscape and Van Gogh’s “Yellow Café,” and an almost abstract landscape titled “Provence” that Shapiro avows is Bennett’s best painting to date.
Bennett shows her work often. This summer her work was featured in the Foyer Gallery at the Emerson Center, and she currently has paintings on display in the Indian River County Library and the County Administration Building. One of her paintings was also shown in the recent 100% Pure Florida exhibition at Melbourne’s Fifth Avenue Art Gallery.
Her work is on display at Lighthouse through September. The gallery is at 1875 14th Avenue in the downtown arts district.
