THE PAINTINGS OF RICK BENNETT AT EYE ON ART GALLERY:
WHEN THE WATER IS JUST WET ENOUGH
By Louis Zoellar Bickett

The much exhibited and awarded artist Rick Bennett, in his Artist Statement, reveals, “Ultimately my paintings are not complicated.” What Bennett accomplishes with his landscape work is this incredible feeling of light and space, perhaps done simply, but in the polished manner of an artist who is well beyond just ‘speaking terms’ with nature. He fills the work with not just a realistic attitude of ‘this is how we see’ and ‘this is what caught my eye’, but he hits us squarely over the head with a gush of light in every painting. It makes the work believable. Bennett, by way of personal vision, a strong sense of color, and a competent hand, washes his work with light, spilling it over to us, filling the corners of our memories, jogging us to a sensory conclusion: YES, THIS IS REAL. THIS IS JUST HOW IT IS. THIS REEF IS THAT I WADED IN WHEN THE WATERS WERE THAT BLUE. THIS SKY IS ON FIRE—LIKE I KNOW IT CAN BE IN AUGUST: HOW DID BENNETT DO THIS.  Well, he did it through a careful practice of his craft. He chose his teachers well. He states that he is influenced by Corot (among others). If one is drawn to nature as the subject, one could not do better. Bennett’s reefs are like Corot’s fields. They move. They sway. They invite us in for more. We don’t want them to end. Bennett paints water, that hardest of subjects like a master. It is wet. We can stick our feet in to feel the warmth, to feel the cold. And, if Bennett thinks his paintings are not complicated, which I would dispute and prove my point by a quick trip to Eye On Art Gallery, Carmel, IN—and take in every paining in Bennett’s remarkable show—a body of work about nature—but about life—a ‘not uncomplicated’ set of particulars! In viewing Bennett’s work I came away thinking that sometimes, the most direct and simple of things are the deepest and hardest things to fully grasp. Bennett’s paintings (they are smallish—not bigger than 36” wide) took me to a Zen Garden of thought and rest. The ripple of water conveyed is just enough to make me buy it. In the end, I felt, Bennett’s work had the power to make me leave the gallery
with more than enough to contemplate, to roll over in my mind. Indeed, I could see them over and over again, as clear as the ocean water he paints—those lovely paintings, tattooed to my memory—that ever changing and fluid part of ourselves that anchors us here—or tears us away to THERE.

One of the greatest art developments of all time is the fact that in the era of post-isms—there is no ‘ism’. One can make art the way one wants. There is no right way to do it. We are in an era of inclusion. And, though hyper-realistic painting has never really been my full cup of tea, I admire it greatly and know a good one when I see it. Bennett does it in a masterful way—Bennett has a story—complicated or not—and he is sticking to it.