It started in grade school this obsession with drawing. It started as a young girl in my father's workshop, this compulsion to build. Somewhere, in the process of becoming a 'grown up', I lost my way. And then, I was given a sign.
Allow me share a true story:
Idling my life away in traffic on a major artery through town, I glanced down through my window to the asphalt below and discovered a sign right there next to my old cranky van. A sign that despite the volume of people who had passed it by, was waiting, right there, for me!
I leapt from the van, rescued my sign, and with heart pounding in rhythm with with the angry horns, I wrestled it into my vehicle and sped away. Hand lettered in festive colors the plywood sign commanded that I "produce." And so I vowed to do so.
When I got home a short while later, I gathered up stray pickets from my broken fence and started producing crosses. Unique, impossible to duplicate, I've created hundreds of crosses, sculptures and art boxes from scavanged wood and found objects. As word spread of what I was doing, people started saving their broken, unwanted things and leaving them for me. I turned nothing down and have put most to use over the years. There are crosses in private collections and galleries throughout the United States including the music hall at the Orlando House of Blues and the Polk Museum of Art.
In May of 2010, I returned to my drawing roots and began creating paintings with oil pastels on paperboard. Self taught, I use cereal boxes, beer and Coke cartons as my canvas. These are mounted on salvaged lumber which is painted with house paint collected from the county recycling center. As with the crosses, each painting is unique and although some themes may reoccur, there will be no duplication. I have no desire to create assembly line or mass produced work believing that each creation should be as unique as the one for whom it is intended. I particularly love commission as they take me back to grade school and all my friends clamboring for me to "draw me a pony, a dog, a bunny, a turtle..." What would YOU like me to draw?
Original art by southern artist, k.c. bennett 
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