Trudy Benson (born 1985) is an American

abstract painter Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19t ...

who lives and works in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, NY.

Early life and work

Trudy Benson was born in

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

in 1985. She received a BFA from

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virgini ...

in 2007 and an MFA from the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

, New York in 2010. Benson is known for her large scale abstract paintings that utilize large swaths and globs of paint. Her style was influenced by early computer painting programs, such as

MacPaint MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was nota ...

and

Microsoft Paint Microsoft Paint is a simple raster graphics editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program opens and saves files in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats. The program can be in ...

. Critics have linked Benson's work to artistic movements such as

abstract illusionism Abstract illusionism, a name coined by art historian and critic Barbara Rose in 1967. Louis K. Meisel independently coined the term to define an artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the mid-1970s. History The wo ...

and Post-War New York Abstraction. Related painters include Hans Hoffman,

Jonathan Lasker Jonathan Lasker (born 1948) is an American abstract painter whose work has played an integral role in the development of Postmodern Painting. He currently lives and works in New York City. Lasker has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts ...

Al Held Al Held (October 12, 1928 – July 27, 2005) was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings. As an artist, multiple stylistic changes occurred throughout his career, howe ...

, and Keltie Ferris.

Critical reception

In December 2012, Scott Indrisek wrote for ''Modern Painters'' that, "This young Pratt-educated painter is moving away from her previous cartoonishly figurative efforts and toward a maximalist abstraction. The effect is a bit like a 1980s geometry textbook spazzing out and exploding on the wall. Benson works within a deliciously caffeinated language of gestures and shapes-the smear, the dripping line, rainbows, grids, circles-to create compositions that pair smooth, glossy sections with paint applied so thickly it resembles Play-Doh." In May 2013, New York Times Art Critic Karen Rosenberg lauded Benson's paintings at the Lower East Side's Horton Gallery (now Sean Horton Presents in Dallas Texas). In her review, she wrote that her canvases resemble the proportions of early mac computers, and "mimic the squiggly, uncontrollable lines and seemingly miraculous instant color-fills of 1980s graphics programs like MacPaint." She went on to conclude, "There is a deliberate heaviness to her work, an impasto that no screen can yet evoke." "Shapes of Things" at Lisa Cooley was described as a move "beyond the jokey use of tropes culled from computer-graphics programs" and a turn to drawing by Stephen Maine in the summer 2015 issue of

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countri ...

. While critical of her overall show at ''Lyles & King'' in 2018, New York Times Art Critic Martha Schwendener, described an ''

in situ ''In situ'' (; often not italicized in English) is a Latin phrase that translates literally to "on site" or "in position." It can mean "locally", "on site", "on the premises", or "in place" to describe where an event takes place and is used in ...

'' installation made of spray paint and canvas as indicative of her best work. "Ragged and kind of punk, it reminds you of what made Ms. Benson’s art exciting in the first place when, armed with analog paint and digital thinking, she took on the history of painting and won a round."

References

External links

Lyles & King Gallery

8 Great Brooklyn Artists Under 30

* ttp://hyperallergic.com/70164/running-the-gamut-trudy-bensons-flamboyant-restraint/ Running the Gamut: Trudy Benson's Flamboyant Restraint* https://www.cocurata.com/pages/trudy-benson * Publication on the artis
Trudy Benson
Ceysson éditions d'Art, 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Benson, Trudy 1985 births Living people 21st-century American painters 21st-century American women artists American women painters Painters from Virginia Pratt Institute alumni Virginia Commonwealth University alumni