Allen Bentley
Biography
Allen Bentley’s exploration of motion runs throughout his career. Even his still-lifes in college seemed to shift in place. Using the vehicle of bustling dancers, swimming couples, and now vintage cars made of quick, energetic touches he discusses the dynamic nature of our quest for connection in our lives. Pushing, pulling, flirting, chasing: these are the moments Bentley explores through a flurry of gestural marks.
He received his Master’s of Fine Art from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and his Bachelor’s of Fine Art from Western Carolina University in 1996. He has exhibited across the country, with solo exhibitions in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and San Diego. Allen Bentley is represented in Philadelphia by Bridgette Mayer Gallery. He has shown in the Philadelphia International Airport and in Artworks at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2009, Bentley had his first solo museum show at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE.
He teaches Figure Drawing and Drawing at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD and serves as chair of the Christopher Lyon Scholarship selection committee at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bentley lives in Clarksburg, MD with his wife and children.
Artist Statement
I’ve always been a figurative painter. I use bodies in motion to tell my stories, exploring the relationship of a couple or the celerity of cars as they push, pull, flirt, and chase. Capturing a moment amidst motion is what I strive for in every piece I create. This is exactly why I began with dancers. There’s an inherent story in couple’s dance of moving to and fro, in and out, that lends itself to the electricity of their relationship and it thrilled and inspired me to immortalize that feeling in oils and charcoal.
While doing a body of work on couples underwater, I found myself becoming as interested in the dynamics of the environment that moved around my subjects as I was with the figures themselves. In between painting work focused on the figure, I began exploring the water, not as background, but as subject. Then, once more I was falling deeper into the passion and impatience of capturing motion, this time with ripples, bubbles, and currents.
Now, after two decades of polishing and painting my dance works, I’ve jumped onto a whole new track of excitement— the freedom of driving. Not focused on how it looks but how it feels. Power, anticipation, exhilaration: to slip through on the edge of control. It’s finding that line between forward and stillness. Just like in the paintings, speed blurs the world as your focus is sharpened, spirit is calmed as you burn through space. This work is about freedom to be in a moment and exists as yet another deep exploration of motion in my life.
The pursuit of real interaction drives so much of our relationships. Whether in speed, underwater, or in dance, my work explores intimacy and connection through motion. Energy and passion, rhythm and play guide my figures through moments of reaching, spinning, holding. We chase one another in the hopes of finding a similar resonance, an affinity with another.
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