Growing a baby, so I’m told, is like renting out your insides as an apartment, and the renter can make a ruckus any time of day or night.
Completed during a pandemic and her own pregnancy, Portraits of the Motherland, is a boisterous collection of new paintings by Kait Benninger.
The show comprises six landscapes of the region, a painterly tangle of forms that sometimes looks like human limbs (or was that a kidney?). In fact, if it wasn’t for the candy-like colours and blue sky, these could be ultrasound images.
Titles such as “Tree and Manure Tank” are somewhat jarring, given that pink and white clouds dominate the composition. Still, completed in what appears to be a flurry of energy, the paintings radiate colour and a love for the local landscape.
But the surprising joy in these oil paintings is found in the virtuosity of line that is not typical of a relatively young painter. Fence posts become calligraphy under Benninger’s brush.
We will need to keep our eyes on this Grey county artist in the years to come.
On display at the R.D.Abrams Gallery in Durham, the images are turned to face main street, Hwy 6, so they can be viewed at any time of day or night, but the best time is at dusk, when daylight is less intrusive. Follow Kait Benninger on Instagram @k8benni, or on Facebook: Kate Benninger Grein.
By the way, it’s a boy.
Timothy Dyck, for R.D. Abrams Gallery
