Painting, drawing, illustration and installation

you will be able to enter Gala and Zack Bent’s shared studio space where you will find the artists available for conversation, plus work in progress and work for sale.

I possess a nearly compulsive desire to draw. Because of this, drawing has become for me a handy tool for pragmatic thinking, psychological refuge and focused dreaming. The subjects that I draw are revisited over a lifetime of curiosity and a desire to peek beneath the surface of what is seen and known. As such, water and wind, plants, animals and geological forms, along with verbal, mathematical or architectural shorthand, appear again and again in shifting forms. Drawn patterns are ways that I continuously funnel my own appreciation of natural forms and movement into my work.

I am interested in the conversation between what is fixed and what is malleable, the cluttered edges of life that seem to challenge an ordered grid. I am interested in an epistemology that stems from a slow and steady observation of overlapping systems, whether in biological or geological inter-relatedness or the languages of science and mathematics, philosophy and religion. The relation of line to thought has a visceral connection for me in the ongoing project of living-in-the-world, where obstacles may resist tidy solutions, and where you sometimes must grab a pencil to explain yourself.

Gala has worked as an illustrator, and her most common clients have been musicians and scientists.

Gala Bent is an artist who pursues a hybrid mix of studio-based practice and project-based illustration with inspiration supplied by science, music, theology, poetry and contemplation of natural forms. Bent is currently full time faculty member at the Cornish College of the Arts and lives with her artist/photographer husband Zack Bent and their three sons in Seattle, WA.

Visitors will transit up a 100-foot sloped drive. There is a step down and another step up to the studio space. Weather-permitting, if there is a need, the steps can be circumvented by opening up a garage door as the entrance.