Amy Bennett’s Art Offers a Glimpse Into Complicated Fictional Scenes

Artist Amy Bennett paints detailed narrative paintings that rely on 3D models she builds. Using cardboard, foam, wood, paint, glue, and model railroad miniatures, she constructs various fictional, scale models, which she later studies through her paintings. It’s a delicate process, one that takes patience and diligence, with the finished products (both models and paintings) creating a fictional landscape that deserves a closer look.

For Bennett, the models become a sort of stage on which she develops her narratives, offering complete control over lighting, composition, and vantage point to achieve a certain dramatic effect. Recent models have included a town, neighborhood, lake, theater, doctor’s office, church, and numerous domestic interiors.

“My earlier paintings are more explicitly narrative,” writes Bennett on her website. “Similar to a memory, they are glimpses of a fictional scene that might move the viewer to consider the moment before or after the one presented in the painting. I am interested in storytelling over time through repeated depictions of the same house or car or person, seasonal changes, and shifting vantage points.”

Her aim is for the collective images to invite the viewer to consider shifting relationships to their surroundings over the course of time and to offer a reminder of the persistence of change and the impermanence of everything.

Take a look at some of her tangible creations.