Benet Haughton writes about painting gardens and his forthcoming exhibition:
“I have called this show Correspondences. It began with 7 works that play directly with the idea of correspondences between one half of the work and the other. These are the book-like ones. There are some that also arise from my interest in layers and words as a medium of expression in art. I only decided I wanted to put paintings of my experience of gardens into the show after I had registered the title with Edinburgh Fringe! So, I leave you to make what you can of the correspondence idea with these. The garden work arises from 2 months working in a very open-to-the-elements barn in Somerset in 2022; a lot of air and also light to dark interior exterior contrast. And then coming from that time to this year I worked from drawings in our backgreen garden in our sitootery when it was raining. These oils are my interpretations of these places.
I have painted most of my life. In 1959 when I was 8 my mother gave me her box of oil paints that she had inherited from her father. At school I learned drawing and spent as much time as I could in the art room where I learned about colour. Between 1970 and 1984 my time was taken up in a multitude of ways being a parent and husband, and also building and founding, along with my parents and many others, a therapeutic community called Lothlorien in Galloway. Later, I trained as a psychotherapist and only returned to painting in 1999. Thereafter I attended a year of Thursdays at Leith School of Art and other drawing classes. Painting is now a primary interest and focus.”
Photo: Rosegarden. Oil on canvas. 120x90cm.
12 – 25 August 2023
Meadows Community Gardens 