Allen Bentley | Love story

American painter Allen Bentley received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and his BFA from Western Carolina University in 1996. Bentley’s work has been exhibited across the country, with solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, San Diego and Philadelphia.

He has shown in the Philadelphia International Airport and in Artworks at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2009, Bentley had his first solo museum show at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.

He teaches Life Drawing and Intro Drawing at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD. When Bentley is not traveling the country working with professional to celebrity dancers, he lives in Montgomery Village, MD with his wife and children.

The Water Series is a love story.

A fluidity of marks, of movement, of the slippery dynamics of relationship, love. Intimacy and connection have been at the heart of my work for years.

In the past I have explored these themes through dancers and wrestlers, couples swing dancing or engaged in a pillow fight: it is all the same to me.

We, as people, are bound to the ones we love: we circle one another, we flirt, we pursue, we play, we cry, we want from another. My work has used dancing and playing couples to explore these dynamics".

"Years ago, I made a group of paintings called the Water Series. During my first year of marriage, I convinced my young wife to sit, swim, and roll through a cold mountain stream while I painted her from shore.

Why water?

To me, water is the perfect metaphor for love: all-encompassing and powerful. In water/in love, a wave can carry or drown you, but the currents are so irresistible you ignore the concerns from your lungs about breathing.

In water/in love, there is nothing else: any other voices are silenced in the enveloping quiet. And in that drowning/flying silence, bodies reach for each other – that is the moment I seek.

This is the relationship of a couple stripped of the social constructs of dance. There is no audience, only these two, raw and unpolished, losing their footing, tumbling, falling, reaching for each other, pulled apart or pushed together by the water".

"My mark making has always been fluid. Sliding, running from hand to paper, to canvas: hand to form. Marks find, describe form, around form as water surrounds surface. This new series gives my hand room to play.

The abstraction found underwater matches my natural mark making inclinations, providing me a level of abstraction that I haven’t allowed myself in my recent work.

At its core, this new series goes back to that initial inspiration from early in my career. Here the couple is submerged, out of sorts, upside down, completely immersed: in love" - Allen Bentley

Il pittore Americano Allen Bentley si è laureato nella University of Pennsylvania nel 2000 dopo il BFA ottenuto dalla Western Carolina University nel 1996.

Il lavoro di Bentley è stato esposto in tutto il paese, con mostre personali a New York, Chicago, San Diego e Philadelphia.

Nel 2009, Bentley ha avuto la sua prima mostra personale presso il Centro Delaware per le Arti Contemporanee. Insegna Disegno a Montgomery, al College di Rockville, MD.