BOS Profile: Myles Bennett and Carla Avruch
A collaborative work (Untitled, 2009) by I could have spent the entire weekend in Myles Bennett’s studio on McKibbin St. With its wall of light, balmy plants, ink- and paint-stained workspace, and a slim and stealth white cat named Brutus gracefully lurking, it was a place one can’t help but feel the urge to create something beautiful, haunting, intricate, and introspective.
Myles shared his space for the weekend with fellow artist and lovely girlfriend Carla Avruch (who works out of her spacious studio on Catalpa Avenue in Ridgewood), whose large works on primed canvas evoke thoughts and images of the body’s internal workings, flow, and structures… or lack thereof. The palette she works in is also somehow organic and soft, and fuses shapes and lines in a way that makes the eye sink into seemingly endless depths within the canvas.
Myles’ work, some equally large, some square and smaller were on unprimed canvas in mostly ink and graphite, and also spoke of the body, but from the outside. His large figurative works were some of the most beautiful paintings I’ve seen. Starting with ink blotting and finding the figure in the unexpected shapes of the ink, lines, and grain in the canvas, his technique leads to interpretations of the body that evoke pain, pleasure, emotion, and tension. The canvas itself becomes part of the composition in many of his works as the weave is removed in places, and in others pleated and sewn to reshape the canvas. A favorite of mine is the (above pictured) collaborative work where both artists are on different paths — Carla making shapes and following them deeper into the canvas, and Myles creating lines following where the surface takes him.
