Art: Amy Bennett paints incredibly realistic scenes from miniature sets

I have to admit, I’ve developed a bit of an obsession with miniatures of late; from Alber Napoleon Wildner to William Child the concept of building a universe only to make an artwork from it fascinates me. Amy Bennett is another artist whose practice is based on miniatures, but her process differs in an important way; Amy creates whole intricate sets complete with miniature models not to photograph but to paint detailed narrative paintings from, allowing her complete control over lighting, composition and vantage point.

The dramatic quality to Amy’s paintings is all the more poignant for being unidentifiable unless you already know how she makes it. So far the model buildings she has created include a theatre, a doctor’s office, a church and various houses, and each recurs throughout her portfolio lending a strange, dreamlike repetition to her work.

She explains: “Similar to a memory, they are fictional constructions of significant moments meant to elicit specific feelings and to provoke the viewer to consider the moment before or after the one presented in the painting. I am interested in storytelling over time through repeated depictions of the same house or car or person, seasonal changes, and shifting vantage points. Like the disturbing difficulty of trying to put rolls of film in order several years after the pictures have been taken, my aim is for the collective images to suggest a known past that is just beyond reach.” And that they do.