I grew up in several European countries after the early years in Sweden. I immigrated to the United States in my early twenties.

After living in Mexico for a year where I started my art process seriously, I continued my studies formally at the San Francisco Art Institute where I received my MFA in the early seventies.

Painting is a process. In the beginning there is chaos, which is brought to order by balancing, playing with, and harmonizing by the painting process. The medium of fabric dyes, oil sticks, oil pastels, charcoal, graphite, etc. is liberating, since history-less.

Sewing my edges, and thus keeping the edges soft, pleases by connecting with women's work. The experience is a confrontation with the self, giving up control where the process is leading, detaching as in meditation. Painting has been an integral part of my life for more than thirty years, and I want each painting to visualize all I know and have experienced since my beginning.

My exhibition history is extensive. My last solo exhibitions were at the Stanford University Women's Center in 1998 and at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco.

Group shows in Malta, the Museum of Modern Art in Mid Wales (Machynlleth), New York Law School, the Interart Center (New York City), and the Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle.

I was affiliated for many years with the Natalini Gallery in Chicago, until it closed in 1988.

I have participated in a great number of exhibitions in the greater Bay Area.

The materials I work with are fabric dyes, oil sticks, oil pastels, charcoal, graphite and artist's acrylic medium on unstretched raw canvas.

Agathe Bennich

e-mail: abennich@agathe-bennich.com
web site: www.agathe-bennich.com