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86 Falls Road, Shelburne, Vermont 05482
10:00-5:00 Tues through Fri & 10:00-4:00 Sat
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Robert Bent

Working primarily in large-scale abstract paintings, I use color and composition to create canvases that hum with energy, inviting viewers into an immersive, embodied experience. Color is my primary tool: experimenting with color relativity, such as the vibrant clash of red and violet, I explore how the picture plane can seem to vibrate or move. I also embrace impasto techniques to build dense, tactile surfaces that entreat the viewer not only to see, but to feel. The paint becomes a visceral, sculpted presence, a second skin; each mark a trace of intuitive movement accrued over time.

I am interested in how one might manifest affect – pre-cognitive sensations that bypass rational thought – on a canvas and, in turn, in response to the work: a dynamic exchange of intensity among viewer, artwork, and environment. Biomorphic forms emerge from these oil-and-acrylic topographies, variously evoking human, floral, and planetary bodies suspended in restless orbit. Indeed, my paintings are attempts to find, and to offer, a sense of order and balance amidst the chaos of sensory stimuli we encounter every day; an attempt to make sense of the world without minimizing its complexity.

 




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