Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

In 1998 at twelve years old, Jana Benitez held her solo exhibition at the Ayala Museum, debuting her art to the awe of viewers. She earned the reputation of a prodigy, also later graduating magna cum laude from Brown University and establishing an interdisciplinary art studio in Texas, the Light Lab. She also pursued history courses at the Universidad de Chile and fine arts at the Universidad de Catolica. Then she further developed her painting skills at the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris. In her continuous artistic evolution of shifting between representational and abstract style, Benitez has developed a confident contemporary painterly style, vivid colors, textured layers, and dynamic lines and strokes. Her immersive philosophical and art studies as well as her encounters with various realities have impacted her sensibilities as an artist. Through the years, she has produced contemporary works with a spontaneous quality, also seemingly reaching out to the subconscious. This particular piece displays Benitez’s firm grasp on Abstract Expressionism and the power of impulses and instinct in the creation of art. It is a notable part of her oeuvre of bold, largescale paintings in which she showcases a visual vocabulary distinctively hers and creative processes cultivated by her active pursuits in life, from studying martial arts at a Daoist temple in China’s Wudang mountains to camping in New Mexico and experiencing the beauty of nature in New Zealand.