Amy Bennett by Eleanor Heartney

Amy Bennett by Eleanor Heartney

Amy Bennett: Small Changes Every Day is the first book on the work of US-born artist Amy Bennett. Working with common themes such as transition, aging, isolation and loss, her work shows the fragility of relationships and people's awkwardness in trying to coexist and relate to one another.

Bennett creates miniature 3D models to serve as evolving still lifes from which she paints detailed narrative paintings. Recent models have included a neighbourhood, lake, theatre, doctor's office, church, and numerous domestic interiors. The models become a stage on which narratives are developed, and offer complete control over lighting, composition and vantage point to achieve a certain dramatic effect. The paintings that follow are glimpses of a scene or fragments of a narrative. Similar to a memory, they are fictional constructions of significant moments meant to elicit specific feelings and to provoke the viewer to consider the moment before or after the one presented in the painting.

Bennett tries to tell a story over time through repeated depictions of the same house, car or person. Seasonal changes, and shifting vantage points, each reappearing throughout, lend a dream-like repetition to her work. Her aim is for the collective images to suggest a known past that is just beyond reach.

Published in partnership with Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm and Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles.