Artist Statement
Tempting

These paintings are built on speed, using the same rhythms found in figurative gesture drawings. There is a seductive dynamism native to fast observational work that matches well with the movement and line in the paintings. In both, the fast markmaking will either succeed in finding form or not. Working from a live model is exhilarating: there is no safety net of time, no reworking over the next few months to make a piece stronger. The immediacy is intoxicating. The lines follow, caress the forms savoring the shifts in space and rhythm. Line prods the form into being: out of the mass of erratically searching and sensuous lines, form is revealed.

The dance and pillow fight paintings in this series embody temptation. The paintings focus on luxurious color, rich and strong. The markmaking flirts with the form, both shaping it and showing the process behind it. Tempting extends to the subjects of the work as well. Each player in the work strives to tempt the other. Dance naturally has that game of seduction at work. Dancers advance and retreat, signaling the other to follow. That act is a fascinating part of our daily lives that gets heightened and illustrated in dance, and further explored in my work. The playful pillow fight is built around enticing and seduction. This goofy and awkward, sensual and provocative act is a game of drawing the other person in, of advancing and pulling away.

Through the luxury of color and the lusciousness of form, the immediacy of rhythm and the sensuality of line, it is hoped that the viewer will find in these works what I do in the diversity of their execution: temptation.

Allen Bentley
January 2007

Allen Bentley - Catalogue Essay by Katie Stone Sonnenborn

Allen Bentley
Allen Bentley has been depicting couples at dance and play for nearly a decade, and his work conveys the assuredness and comfort of the familiar. Approaching the physique as a classicist might, he pays close attention to musculature, torsion, balance and weight and uses his ease and knowledge of the human form to pursue the emotional and communicative expressions revealed by touch. Rather than limit his practice, the narrow parameters and repetitious dedication provided a depth to the work that carries it beyond literal subject matter and towards a complex investigation into the human condition. Though he paints men and women in motion, Bentley's subject is in fact the body, and more precisely, the body as a means of non-verbal communication.
The intimate energy that Bentley's paintings evoke is facilitated by a number of formal decisions. First among them are the backgrounds, intense and strident abstract fields which remove the players from reality and lock them in dreamlike states delineated by color. A second is the oblique angle of representation, employed in a way that shields the subjects from the directed gaze of both artist and viewer, and defines their private space. The third is the extraordinary dynamism of the work, notably the animation and the natural ease of the postures. In part, these successes seem to be a result of the increasingly close relationship between Bentley's painting and drawing. A dynamic and instinctual draftsman, his graphic works have long been fluid and free, and the most recent canvases capture this unburdened spirit to great success, often conveying a raw and unbridled character which, as the artist says, "push the painting[s] well past comfort."
The vitality of each work suggests rapid execution and spontaneous observation, spirited renderings in the tradition of early twentieth century realists. Yet surprisingly, Bentley's scenes are borne out of a taxing and meticulous methodology, a fact revealed by an early work, Apart (year TK) whose visible grid hints at the method behind his process. Like many artists in this postmodern era, Bentley's paintings engage the camera and he shoots, vets, and transposes photographs via grid onto canvas. Moreover, each scene involves an elaborate production which includes cast selection, costume choices and stage direction-prefigured performances which are essential to the appearance and tenor of the paintings. Today the grids have dissolved and the boundaries between the stages of creative process are increasingly intuitive. What remains are compositions that hover somewhere between reality and remembrance, caught by Bentley's perceptive manipulation of fact and fiction, that present a deeply humanistic portrayal of mankind.

Katie Stone Sonnenborn