Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
March 16, 2003
 
Corralling Arizona color
A Narberth resident's landscapes and images of horses are featured at Third Street Gallery.
THE ARTS AND THINGS TO DO
Mary Anne Janco INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF

Driving cattle, working in the corrals, and riding all day in the vast Arizona countryside where a dramatic sunset at day's end is like no other has changed the way Alysa Bennett paints landscapes.

"It's a great world," Bennett said of the Arizona lifestyle that she has adopted since becoming partners in a cattle operation with her father, Peter Bennett, a lifelong cattle rancher.

Bennett, of Narberth, who heads to the 99 Bar Ranch in southern Arizona several times a year, admits that at times when she is in the saddle, she may be gazing at the wildflowers when "I'm supposed to be looking for cows. I'm torn between two worlds."

Her boldly colored landscape paintings and images of horses are part of a show this month at the Third Street Gallery in Philadelphia.

"I was painting horses years ago," said Bennett, who spent summers as a youth at another ranch her father owned in California.

After her children were born, her art focused on figurative work.

"The horses just faded away and didn't come back till the last couple years . . . being around them so much," she said.

"They're fun to draw," said Bennett, who for this show, has two pastel profiles of her son's gentle old quarter horse, Freckles. Other images capture horses lying down, revealing their vulnerability.

The corrals are next to the barn, Bennett said. When the horses lie down, "I grab a sketch book and camera." One of the more curious four-legged subjects, Too Tall Jones, usually noses his way over, she said. "He just wants to eat the paper."

In this show, her horse drawings - graphite and acrylic on Mylar - have a wash of color as background. Seeing these beautiful, strong creatures lying down puts them in a different perspective, she said. Bennett drew them as a tribute to her mother, Maud Cort, an accomplished equestrian and artist, who died in 2000 after a long illness.

Bennett's landscapes capture the red-hot Arizona landscape that surrounds the high desert ranch. In one of her vibrant oil paintings, two red Angus bulls rest in the mesquite. Another shows a calf and its reflection as it drinks at a watering hole. In a painting of the blooming ocotillo cactus with its scarlet flowers, Bennett added two brilliant vermilion flycatcher birds.

Bennett, who earned a master's degree in fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania, has simplified her landscapes as she paints the vast, open space.

"It was a real challenge to simplify," Bennett said, but she has always loved color.

Early one morning as she headed to the barn, the sun was rising in the east, reflecting pink on the hill. The stars were still out and the moon was setting, she said. "It was just staggering."

Bennett, at times, used to put a sleeping bag on the back of a flatbed truck and sleep under the stars. As she lay one night in the darkness, she recalled looking straight ahead on the horizon and seeing an incredible star. The stars are as bright on the horizon as they are high in the sky, she said.

"It's an amazing sight. You feel very different in that kind of space," she said. Though some may find it frightening, "I think it's comforting." It feels right to feel that small, she said. "It is almost like a relief."

In her painting, "she goes beyond the literal," said her friend Francine Shore. "It's not merely an observation. It's a translation of her relationship with the land and the horses."

Her portraits of the horses reflect the strength and fragility that she sees working with them so closely, said Shore, an instructor at the Main Line Art Center.

Her paintings have a luminous quality, Shore said. The surfaces are rich and patterned, with lots of layers of color, she said. "The colors are joyful and fluid."

In May, Bennett will host Shore and a group of artists from the Main Line Art Center at the ranch.

Bennett, the mother of two, moved with her husband, poet Greg Djanikian, from Philadelphia to Narberth in 1990. She has traveled to the Arizona ranch over the years, helping out in the corrals. When her father wanted to sell it to retire a couple of years ago, she asked him to teach her how to run it. "I had fallen in love with it," she said.

The ranch, surrounded by mountains on three sides, has 325 cows, 26 bulls and 11 horses.

"I love the lifestyle. It's very compelling to get up at 5 a.m. and just ride out and be out all day never knowing what could happen that day," she said.

It's not without its adventures, said Bennett, who was almost blown off her horse in a wind storm while on a ridge trying to round up a few stray cows one spring afternoon. In July and August, lightning storms kick up in the afternoon. Bennett recalled that she, her father and the ranch manager were driving in the cows one afternoon when lightning started striking all around. "We got them through the fence," she said, then galloped to the safety of the barn.

The landscape is harsh.

"It's cactus and snakes and drought . . . but there's a harsh beauty to it. In the daylight, the color is subtle . . . you have to look for it . . . but it becomes very dramatic at the end of the day. A sunset there is like none other I've ever seen in my life."

Send Arts news to Mary Anne Janco, The Inquirer, 800 River Road, Conshohocken, Pa., 19428; e-mail it to PAarts@phillynews.com; or fax to 610-313-8243. Contact suburban staff writer Mary Anne Janco at 610-313-8217 or mjanco@phillynews.com.

Snapshot

Alysa Bennett

Philosophy: "I'm trying to speak visually about the way I see the world. I have a love of drawing and color which I hope I'm bringing to that vision. My hope is when others look at the work, that love of landscape and color will come across to them and they will be moved by it in some way."

Influential Artists: Growing up, Bennett visited museums with her mother, an artist who studied murals in Mexico. Other influences include Wolf Kahn, Mark Rothko and Milton Avery.

Favorite chores: "I love working in the corrals, cutting cows and calves off. It's fun riding. It's better than a Disneyland ride."

Parting Words: "I'm probably the only person in Narberth who gets both Art in America and Cattle-Fax" magazines.