Amy Bennett’s paintings are more than enough. But then she added a twist. Relying on 3D models, she first creates intricate models that serve as references to her paintings, before going on to paint these models on canvas.
To create her miniature models she uses a wide array of materials, from cardboard and foam to wood and paint. Recent models have included a town, neighborhood, lake, theater, doctor’s office, and church, all made with amazing precision and care.
“Typically I don’t know exactly how the model will look in the end,” she said in an interview with wertn magazine. “It’s a feeling out process to try to get something that exists only in the imagination (and is sometimes quite murky) into the real world. There is a lot of exploration and play. I don’t do any preparatory sketches – for me, the 3D model is the sketching process.”
“While working with tiny pieces that often slip frustratingly from my fingers, I am reminded of the delicacy and vulnerability of the world I am creating, and this summons empathy for my subject,” she wrote on her personal website. “The clumsy inadequacies of miniatures help me to convey a sense of artifice and distance. I try to paint the scenes in a way that feels like a believable world, but an alternate, fabricated world.”
Check out her tiny worlds and detailed paintings in the gallery below.
