Zoe Benbow lives and works right in the middle of bustling East London, which is in stark contrast to her artistic practise: engaging with her work immediately transports the viewer from the urban landscape into the natural one.
The images are developed from onsite drawings combined with an intense engagement with the processes of painting as a studio practice. The resulting work is a meditation on geology, association and memory.
Her recent paintings explore the subject of trees as an expression of an accessible wilderness on our doorstep. These paintings, developed in her studio and inspired by photographs and drawings gathered in the wooded landscapes of Grasmere, touch on the landscape as remembered in fleeting moments. By revisiting these images through the processes of painting and repeatedly exploring the same motifs over a long period of time, the canvases become about an implied landscape, a landscape of the mind's eye.
