Biography

Jonathan Bennett (born 1962) is a British artist. Growing up in a small North Staffordshire town, he devoured the one shelf of art books at the local library and had his first painting exhibition there, aged 15. After completing a multi-disciplinary Fine Art degree at Leeds, he took a studio with an artists’ collective in Sheffield, the “Steel City”. Here, in the late 1980’s, pulling a trolley behind his bike, he cycled around the derelict factories, collecting materials to make sculpture. It was his interest in public art that took him to London in 1990, to do a Master’s degree in Site Specific Sculpture. He has supported his art practice over the years through commissions, teaching, landscaping and art sales. Since 2008, he has been a part-time member of staff with Core Arts, a London based mental health charity. Home is now Hackney, East London, where he lives and has a studio.

Statement

In Jonathan Bennett’s paintings the human body is reduced to simple comic forms, that he models in clay, as a visual source. Their body parts, sometimes represented by architectural features, are painted in cobalt blue, referencing the manufactured ceramics of his birth place, Stoke-On-Trent.  He is a self-taught painter, having predominantly made sculpture at art school and professionally. Working quickly with oils, he mostly paints on paper, presenting the finished work framed under glass, or mounted on board.

‘Awkwardness bullied by Fashion’ ‘Clumsiness in the gaze of Arrogance’ ‘Anguish banished by Certitude’. A list of Bennett’s flamboyant titles can read like poetry, and they form a distinctive feature of his art practice. They allude to the allegorical tradition in painting, which personified moral virtues and other human concepts. Such works include ‘The Triumph of Truth’ (1622-25) by Rubens, ‘Time Defeated by Hope and Beauty’ (1627) by  Vouet and ‘Liberty Leading the People’ (1830) by Delacroix. Bennett disrupts this tradition with a more contemporary use of language, introducing nuance, while keeping the original pomposity.

The finished paintings present an often menacing melodrama, between anthropomorphic objects personified by the works’ titles. This is his starting point, a framework in which to explore his unconscious mind. He is not concerned with exact ‘meaning’ more a search for the optimum balance between intrigue and ambiguity, humour and pathos, profundity and absurdity.

Education

2024-25 Contemporary Art Academy, Online Education, PG1/2

1990-92  Wimbledon School of Art, Site Specific Sculpture M.A.

1983-86 Leeds Polytechnic. Fine Art B.A. (hons).

1981-82  North Staffordshire Polytechnic, Foundation Art and Design.