carolbenioff.com

Statement
My work consists of series of prints, paintings or drawings that are open ended narratives.  I think of my work as adult bedtime stories that ease the viewer into the darker mysteries of life, one picture at a time. 

Recurring themes in my work are the transition from girl child to womanhood, at the table (connections at home), the price of silence (not speaking leads to not knowing, leads to forgetting, leads to lost connection), and children’s games (learning the rules of play). 

The layering of multiple techniques, print making, painting, drawing and digital mediums; mirrors my love of building images that integrate the past, the present, the tangible, the felt, the broken, the whole.

Feminism and My Art
My work comes out of my experience, sensations of growing up female in 1950’s - 1970’s. It is the visceral sensations of being ignored, not heard, constrained, uncomfortable in your own skin. 

In the early 1970’s when I was an undergraduate at California College of Arts and Crafts, my attempts at personal narratives of growing up female were either ignored or ridiculed. Not finding a teacher, mentor or fellow students who shared my interest in exploring a feminine narrative vein, I left school and in the main my art.
In the late 1970’s joined a women’s consciousness raising group in San Francisco, facilitated by Jeanne Adelman. The group of women writers, film makers, musicians, scientist pushed me to resume my daily art practice.

At a master class taught by Elizabeth Murray at the San Francisco Art Institute I learned it was more typical of women to work sporadically because of life’s practical demands, and that was just fine. And two, my work was good and people took it seriously. 

In the 1990’s developed multiple series of work that focused on the transition from girl child to womanhood; The Gifts, The Trials, The Passages and The 12 Covenants or the unspoken rules of growing up female.  These series gave voice to the growing pains of a girl child in the 1950’s, an adolescent in the 1960’s, and a young woman in the 1970’s.