British artist Grace Bentley revolves her art practice around the idea of Human suffering and how it occurs in the mind. She attempts to blur the lines between light and dark as her work values brightly colored images that convey darker meanings. Bentley was inspired by the melancholy suffering of 2020 quarantine as she plays with ideas of time, capitalism, self-image, and loneliness. As well as using events that have occurred in her own life to show the audience a unique image of her distorted memories.
Bentley doesn’t have a methodology to her art practice; however, this is the point, her work is created by chance as it is made in the moment. Her rough process is to take a memory or a concept, change something inside the image to make it surreal and then create making the image almost appear cheery. She is not restricted to one type of medium however she has favored oil paints in several her works.
Many of her paintings feature dark looming backgrounds pushing forward bright, colorful characters that are always a representation of herself. She will either portray a self-portrait or find a way to transform herself into another animal, for example a frog. This frog acts as a sort of spirit animal as it ventured her own mind and walks through the nonsensical obstacles that reside there.
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