LOIS BENDER

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Lois Bender’s monoprint series and work on canvas with stencils, variously celebrating the sensual round eucalyptus leaves to water worlds of ponds and oceans, are meditations on the ethereal nature of nature. In her flowing imagery, she translates botanical forms of leaf and flower into shadows and afterimages of Dappled Light.  Colored shadows inspire her explorations using stencils, a longtime practice, creating shimmering silhouettes that dance on the surface. Bender’s shadows become tangible, taking on a life of their own as if in the playful turns of a kaleidoscope, bringing a hidden world to light. She brings color to these forests or the endangered coral reefs that she also celebrates in another series.  Line is a new area of investigation, revealing the beauty of inky lines as the featured element in new acrylics on canvas in a more minimalist approach, displaying a visual poetry of a lyrical line. Developed from her GardenSpirits imagery, she envisions an alchemy of matter, form, color and shape in cosmic metamorphoses among gardens, ponds, forests and oceans, all exerting the power of nature upon our human spirit. 

BIO:

Lois Bender holds an MFA from Boston University, and a B.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York. Her art practice interprets nature and botanical themes using painting, mixed media, and printmaking. She is represented by Sara Nightingale Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY. Recently she has participated in a series of ecology-themed shows such as “Earth on The Edge” and “Mayday Earth” at Ceres Gallery, NYC and “Fragile Rainbow“ at EcoArtSpace, NYC. She has held art residencies at Skowhegan, Women’s Studio Workshop, and CAMAC (France).

She began her career as an advertising art director on national brands like Godiva Chocolates before creating her own gift industry art design company GardenSpiritsNY. She has also created nature-inspired retail product designs for the NY Botanical Garden in The Bronx.

The constraints of the Covid pandemic inspired her to conceive and direct an online Curatorial Program for the New York Artists Circle that includes the exhibitions “Lost and Found,” and “I Dreamed a Garden…” She has just co-curated “SCRIBBLES: Habits, Compulsions & Outpourings of the Doodling Mind,” for the Carter Burden Gallery, NY in June 2023. She has taught as a Lecturer in the Art Department at Essex County College, Newark, NJ. She teaches art workshops year round in the Hamptons at sites like Bridge Gardens, Bridgehampton; LongHouse, East Hampton; and Southampton Art Center.