Drew Bennett Presents “Lightness,” an exhibition of new paintings from 2024-25. Bennett’s achievement in this work is in the deepening of his practice, the evolution of technique and the engagement with process. The product, the paintings, are material manifestations of his meditative and disciplined approach, artifacts of joy, of learning and of discovery.

The lightness of spirit in the activities of the figures in Bennett’s paintings is relayed in his painterly focus on light and it’s movement.. Even in stillness, the light in his paintings dances and frolics, it becomes a figure unto itself. The quality of the light not only indicates time of day, but pulls the viewer along its arc, embodying time, or even timelessness.

Bennett works from photographs, his paintings portray moments of reflection and relaxation -presence in the natural environment- alone or with family and friends. To be in these moments is to be vulnerable, similar to the vulnerability needed to stand for and champion these lighter moments as human needs of cardinal importance.