Nicola Bennett is an abstract painter based in Alexandra, in Central Otago, New Zealand. Her work is about the pleasure and energy that comes from immersing ourselves in the exploration of sensory knowledge. She begins with the everyday natural ingredients that we cook with – like asapragus, lemons, aubergines, avocados, apricots – and gradually builds her understanding of them through conversations and collaborations with specialist growers and chefs. Absorbing their sense of care, their impassioned stories, their excitement for growing and cooking is an integral part of Bennett’s process of making: gathering this knowledge is the groundwork for her personal journey of discovery into these ingredients through touch, taste, smell, sound and sight whilst cooking with them in her own kitchen. Only after all that does she move into the studio.

For Bennett cooking and painting share similarities in their search for structure and balance through opposites. She looks to the language of food for inspiration in the composition of her paintings: just as the chef layers in all the ranges of taste, colour and texture, so Bennett layers veils of paint, sometimes opaque, sometimes soft or flat; and pays close attention to how colour, line, form, shape and tone work together to create a satisfying whole. The suggestive power of colour and how it relates to flavour is particularly important in her work. She wants the viewer to eat with the eyes, to see what the mouth feels.

Bennett’s paintings are not a simple representation of the ingredients in abstract form but rather her sensory responses to them which come from this entire process of research and discovery. The passion of others in nurturing and pushing possibilities with ingredients plays a significant role in this, adding a rich energy to her sensory experience that Bennett captures in her paintings. In this way she celebrates the sublime aspects of nature’s humble ingredients, representing the wonder about them beyond their material form.

Written by Dr Victoria Powell

The Gallery Companion