Dana Bentley

Statement

Biography

In 1977 I moved my home base to Toronto where it has remained since. I returned to painting large canvases, very large canvases and still like this format. For approximately two years I worked with airbrush and industrial spray applications, concentrating on color and design in a generally figurative mode. Then I re-discovered my expressionist interest, moving through a series of abstract experiments, including “throw painting” and other forms of “automatic” paint application.

In the 80s, using large very loosely organized canvases, I completed several series, each composed around a different theme but all decidedly expressionist. This led to my focus on surface and texture beginning back in 1983 when I started to superimpose simple geometric shapes over reclining organic figures, moving on to making actual cuts in the canvas. My show at Mercer Union in 1984 presented 12′ x 12′ unstretched tarpaulins that were draped from the gallery ceiling, each constructed of inner-sewn swatches of canvas with built up layered surfaces of lacquer and commercial paints, the wall behind visible through cuts in the canvas.

Shows at the Manning Gallery in 1985, 1986 and at the Ruby Fiorino Gallery in 1985, 1986 and 1987, clearly revealed my continuing commitment to the organic process. The Rotting Series combined this with extended surface, the process of decomposition proclaiming my dislike for pretty painting along with my devotion to the experimental.

The Extended Collages exhibited at Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in 1987, and the Pekao Gallery in 1997 manifest an iconography of found objects combined with painted organic and inorganic materials, the impact derived as much from the expressionist process as the presentation of psychologically charged articles, such as taxidermy, rags, toys, Halloween masks, painted in gobs of tar, oil, encaustic and pigment powder.

 My newest work from 2000 to the present, came about since computers and digital imaging arrived, I have been experimental in making artworks, painting and photographs, when Photoshop arrived it allowed me to think in different ways, rethinking image making and using this digital hybrid as an exciting new drawing and painting tool.  

CV