Gretchen Frances Bennett
Guardian, Garden
October 5th – November 16th, 2024
A new large- and small-format color pencil drawing series of plant-life and other elements of nature trace the relationship between art, landscape, and emotion in my work. Meticulous drawings of natural phenomena render elements of landscape in intricate layers that seem to be off-register with each other, establishing an open and interpretive space that speaks to the overlap between the external natural world and those aspects I discern to be elemental in me; ways I’m not that different from a flower.
My use of nature and found images of such act as stand-ins for emotions and world views, and isolate and depict subjects that resonate beyond the momentary; a garden plot encircled with Walmart fencing recalling ancient stone borders, for example. Thematic questions include, What might a Dahlia look like on a higher dimension?
I imagine these drawings as souvenirs that carry the power and meaning of place and remembrance. Like objects gathered from a trip or event, they might provide direct transport back to a certain location and remind the carrier that maybe they never left that place. Nothing that happens ever stops happening. If I secret a pebble from somewhere into a pocket, the place stays with me. I ascribe meaning to the pebble by keeping it and my decision to keep it gives it meaning. The drawings activate in this same way.