Not Necessarily Painting an Image: Kim Benson on Building Wall Flower

Although she identifies as a painter, Kim Benson approaches her canvases less as substrates for images than as quasi-architectural supports (hence the “wall” in Wall Flower, her painting in the Walker’s collection). They provide sturdy surfaces for repeated acts of addition and subtraction, including the stenciling on and sanding away layers of oil paint, inspired, in the case of Wall Flower, by longer histories of frescos and other wall paintings as well as the 16th-century work of El Greco. Benson’s openness to the endless possibilities of bringing together seemingly incongruous colors, forms, and textures allows for the painting, gradually, to present itself. The final work is very much a physical, material being best experienced, the artist stresses, in person.