Oliver Benoit
Work
Untitled
Sedentary
Outburst
Statement
Between Emotions
This body of work explores the idea that we cannot separate our pleasant from our unpleasant emotions. There are different emotional responses to conditions of social life; emotions generated through childbirth, disasters, divorce, sex. We can express the feelings of happiness and sadness, or anger and pleasure during a single experience. This is whether we choose to pronounce or recognise one of these combinations of emotions rather than the other.
Therefore, emotions cannot be separated or broken into pieces. This being said, there is nothing between happiness and sadness, or disaster and joy. The person experiencing a disaster could also be joyful. I am not putting anything between emotions, because it takes away from human freedom. Imagine continuous feelings of sadness. I am not establishing binaries.
These paintings allow the viewer to generate all kinds of emotions, and there should be nothing placed between the emotions.
Biography
Oliver Benoit is
a Grenadian artist who
has been painting for
over 35 years. Oliver
began as a landscape
and still life painter
before devoting his
time to the abstract
genre. His paintings
are in oil, acrylic, and
encaustic. There are two dimensions to his
work: to provoke and encourage critical
thinking from the perspective of the viewer,
particularly issues that tend to negatively
impact the lives of people; and to create a
sense of pleasure that transcends the subject
matter thereby encouraging the viewer to go
beyond the artist‘s original thought. Such
engagement with the work is stimulated by the
way in which Oliver uses paint to develop a
nice combination of colour and texture that
continuously perplexes the viewer. This is why
Oliver encourages the viewer to look carefully
at his painting. There is more in the work that
is initially perceived. It is advisable to take
another look at his work.