Today we’d like to introduce you to Brett Bennett.
Brett, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
It all started in the 70’s.
Reading Mad Magazine and Spider-Man comic books, coupled with watching classic Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons, helped inspire this artist to continue his crayon drawings well into middle and high school.
After a brief and unsuccessful attempt at dating, I graduated with a General Art Degree from the University of Washington. Bored at an office job that had nothing to do with art, I then studied animation and worked in that field for about a year, but felt unfulfilled in that corporate art world.
I grew up and got married. Soon after my wife showed me by going to one of her art shows that selling artwork was possible, and I’ve been on that road ever since, traveling with her to over 25 art shows the last 4 1/2 years.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I make mashups – taking popular paintings and characters and blend them into a (hopefully) seamless whole to create a new context.
The art is made with a wonderful digital art painting program called “ArtRage”. It’s the closest thing one can get to real oil and impasto effects.
The message of my art is to not take serious art so seriously – to see your favorite paintings or popular characters in a way you haven’t thought of before.
What do you know now that you wished you had learned earlier?
Cultivate your own eccentricities – stay away from trends. Your humor and awkward stories and fetishes will be the thing that separates you from other artists.
Study and focus more than experimenting and giving up. Experimenting and moving onto something the next day is pretty easy to do – seeing something through to the end is hard.
Take your art and show it to as many people as you can. Hearing and seeing someone laugh or cry will inspire you to continue. Or a bad art show where nobody looks at your art will test your character. Both experiences are important. Art is meant to be shared – don’t hide it!
Make art YOU would want to see. Make art that makes YOU go “wow”.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
This year my work will be seen at C2E2 in Chicago, Denver Pop Con in Colorado, Japan Expo in Paris, France, Silicon Valley Comic Con in San Jose, and LA Comic Con in downtown Los Angeles.
People can support my work at https://www.patreon.com/brettsartworld
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.brettbennett.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brettsartworld/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brettsartworld/
Image Credit:
All images © brettsartworld 2019
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