For Immediate Release
February 25, 2008

An Exhibition of Paintings by Benedict Cressy

Main Theater Gallery exhibition features Bay Area artist.

The Cañada College Art Department is presenting an exhibition of paintings by the Bay Area artist, Benedict Cressy. The exhibition is in the Main Theater Gallery, Building 3, and will run from February 19- April 8.

Originally from England, Ben moved to Claremont, California with his family, where he was exposed to a wide variety of art. He studied painting at UC Santa Cruz, developing a body of abstract paintings that led to expressionist figuration. Further studies included a stay at the Vermont Studio Center, and the MFA program at American University, in Washington DC, where he began painting the landscape.

After graduate school, Cressy, like  so many painters before him, moved to New York to live and work in the center of the art world. For five years he worked on blending abstract, landscape, and figurative elements in his paintings, at the same time exhibiting his work extensively. Since 2001 Ben has lived in San Francisco where he continues to paint and to show his paintings.

The current exhibition consists of 18 paintings, including two large scale works. The subjects include landscape painted on location, still life paintings, and surreal “spaces” in which the play of abstraction and representation is most evident.  About the work in this present exhibition, Cressy says:

“In this body of work, I engage a set of recurring still life symbols, discovering possible meanings through their relationships and context within the painting. It is rather like reading tea leaves. The consistent themes that play out are pursuit and angst over the cycles of life, and the relationship between concept and acceptance.

The open ended nature of these expressions allow for many interpretations that can change and grow over time with the viewer. New meanings arise from a simple switch in understanding of what a particular element symbolizes.

Painting has been the ideal medium for me to engage my needs for personal expression as well as for playing with a more formalist set of ideas about abstract spatial constructs. For the last several years I have been working to bridge elements from modernist movements in painting.  Lessons from objective and non-objective abstraction synthesize with elements of metaphoric still life to create a framework for personal expression without dictating an absolute story or specific agenda. “

For more information about this show, contact Bill Morales, Cañada Art Department, at 306-3343, or morales@smccd.edu. To see more of Ben Cressy’s work, visit his website at www.bencressy.com

For more information, contact Robert Hood, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, at hoodr@smccd.edu or 306-3340