Max Benjamin exhibit opens at MoNA

There are signs of hope in the Skagit Valley – even as COVID-19 drags into another year -- in the daffodil fields, in the partial reopening of restaurants and businesses, and at the Museum of Northwest Art. There, a Max Benjamin exhibit (“A Road Well Travelled”) transports visitors from the grays of winter with bold, colorful work spanning five decades. The iconic painter from Guemes Island rarely exhibits his work. In fact he stopped exhibiting in 2002 except for a show at La Conner’s FORUM Arts in 2017. So the MoNA’s new exhibit represents the resumption of Northwest art shows at the Museum and a rare look at Benjamin’s body of work. The exhibit is open until May 9.

Benjamin’s art serves as a sensory wake-up call of fearless colors and soaring canvases, along with the distinct smell of fresh paint. The oil paint scent lingering around some paintings shouldn’t be surprising, says MoNA’s guest curator Susan Parke. Benjamin was reworking some of his pieces right up until the canvases boarded the ferry for MoNA, she explains, in the custody of professional art handlers. Benjamin never feels that he is quite done.

“A Road Well Travelled” is the culmination of months of discussions between Benjamin and Parke. And while the paintings initially gazed at each other across the empty museum in January, they are now on display for the public.

Benjamin’s expressive landscapes and abstracts emphasize two-dimensionality, with the foreground sharing impact with the background. Viewers will find a series of geometrically ordered pieces that he refers to as his most intellectual work. And a collection of pastels, represent the drawings he has used to work through new ideas. Benjamin also has been working with glass artist Steve Klein in Klein’s Skagit Valley studio, and the results are several pieces designed by Benjamin and fired by Klein.

Int the center of the exhibit hall is Benjamin’s palette table, where he has mixed his oil paints for 60 years. He allowed it to be borrowed for this exhibit, and has replaced it in his studio with a sheet of plywood mounted on crates until it returns.

Since he arrived on Guemes Island and built an art studio on his property there, Benjamin has been one of the Skagit area’s dominant artists. He studied under Paris-trained painters Ambrose Patterson and Walter F. Isaacs and his work was shown by Don Foster in Seattle. He has earned a Washington State Governor’s Arts and Heritage Award. At the age of 92 he still spends most of his days in his studio painting, or caretake his gardens – clearing brush or pruning rhododendrons.

“I’m getting to be an old bugger,” he says, but his work defies age. And his schedule is uncompromising. “I work every day, starting 8:30 or 9,” he says, “It’s just something you do.”

His work is meant to be interpreted by the viewer. He never names a painting. Some of the earlier pieces are evocative of the Kent State shooting in 1970, but most defy easy definition. That is by design, he says.

Benjamin paints out of his own experience, while placing the responsibility on the art viewer to gain their own personal experience. Many pieces include abstractions that hint at hearts, bones, doves and the mechanics of the human industrial age. Do not spend too much time looking for imagery though, he wants his work to be experienced in its totality.

“I don’t want to tell people what to think. I think that’s up to those who are looking at it. They should respond without me prompting them. Look at the painting and see what you find,” he says. “If they (viewers) speak out and say they feel or see or believe it’s a painting about ‘xyz,’ that tells me something about the painting.”

For Parke, who met weekly with Benjamin for several months to plan the MoNA exhibit, the project has been a way to get to know Benjamin and his work better and she still pauses to gaze upon his paintings, seeing something new each time that draws her attention. “Its been a pleasure for me to be guest curator,” she says.

Benjamin’s hope is not only to share his work but to draw visitors to the MoNA. “I hope people support this museum. I’m pleased with what they’ve done. In fact, I’m honored.”

There is no admission fee. The gift shop is open daily 11 a.m-5.p.m. Call for gallery hours: (360) 466-4446.