Susan Bennerstrom

Since the early 1980’s, Bennerstrom has developed her passion for the exploration and depiction of light. Structures and objects are stage sets for light with its transformative power and ability to affect emotions. Light and shadow imply the narrative and carry the emotional weight in her paintings. Raised in a strict religious community that denied the reality of the physical world, she was taught that pain and sensual joy were moral failings. However, Bennerstrom was in love with the world in front of her and made a sharp turn away from her religious upbringing and toward an investment in the richness of her senses and her own painting practice. Themes within her practice reflect her early childhood by delving into the fragility of life, the flimsiness of the veil between reality and imagination and all that we cannot know. She sees light as the connective tissue between these worlds.

Bennerstrom studied fine art at Western Washington University in Bellingham and has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. She has had several museum exhibitions, been featured in countless publications and has received prestigious awards and accolades like the Pollock-Krasner Award, fellowships at the Ballinglen Art Foundation Fellowship in Ireland, and has been a recipient of the SOLA grant, Betty Bowen Special Recognition Award, and three Artist Trust GAP Awards.