BEN FENSKE
A Colorful World
Daily life is a constant muse for artist Ben Fenske, who resides in Chianti, Italy. On his canvases he captures the landscape, people and interiors that surround his home, as well as nearby places and scenes from his annual trips to the East End of Long Island. August 24 through September 15, Fenske’s newest paintings will be on display at Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor, New York.
One of the most important components to Fenske’s work is capturing the light effects he finds in nature, which helps unify his diverse subjects. Fenske is also a
colorist. He often uses intense cadmium hues to ramp up what he sees in the natural world. “His process is to look at the light hitting the top plane and record a dab of paint accurately, then the side plane and then the underplane or shadow,” says gallery owner Laura Grenning. “He moves around the object, dabbing the color that matches those observations, while also marking the color that depicts the negative space around the subject.”
Fenske works directly from life, often sketching a few small oil paintings to find the right composition
before returning with a larger canvas and starting the painting. This process enables him to accurately record colors and light. “For major works, he will return many times, weather and light permitting, building the composition,” Grenning explains. “All of them don’t always work out, so he usually has a lot of paintings going on at once.”
Among the artist’s works for the show is the ambitious landscape Evening Cloud, which has a shadow from the cloud covering the terrain in the foreground. Grenning elaborates, “Through tone, he was trying to create a foreground in a painting that is largely a middle and background scene. It was essential to get the value and color accurate to nature or it wouldn’t have worked.”