Sheila Benow Estate
American Painter & Printmaker
American Painter & Printmaker
Ode
It is only necessary to observe her work to realize that Benow’s success is founded on her genuine talents. Her landscapes are superlatively lovely. Many of her etchings, some unusually textured, are miniature yet give the eye a sense of vast expanse. It’s an incredible feat, but it stems from her intensely moving preoccupation with nature in all its myriad forms and moods. Her work is muted and invokes, through delicacy of tints, results that dazzle the eye. Her landscapes appear to transfigure matter into poetry. Her etchings attest to the enormous skill she has acquired in this medium, a medium that gives her the opportunity to express with greater strength the depiction of landscape while retaining an evanescent beauty. Renown she received in the last years she lived and worked in Germany is phenomenal. That her work merits the highest encomiums, that it bears all the rare imprint of genius, that its appeal is immediately and profoundly moving, are beyond doubt. Nevertheless for an unknown American to break down the barriers of language in an alien land, and achieve such spectacular recognition, is a triumph infrequently enjoyed.
—The Woodstock Press
It is only necessary to observe her work to realize that Benow’s success is founded on her genuine talents. Her landscapes are superlatively lovely. Many of her etchings, some unusually textured, are miniature yet give the eye a sense of vast expanse. It’s an incredible feat, but it stems from her intensely moving preoccupation with nature in all its myriad forms and moods. Her work is muted and invokes, through delicacy of tints, results that dazzle the eye. Her landscapes appear to transfigure matter into poetry. Her etchings attest to the enormous skill she has acquired in this medium, a medium that gives her the opportunity to express with greater strength the depiction of landscape while retaining an evanescent beauty. Renown she received in the last years she lived and worked in Germany is phenomenal. That her work merits the highest encomiums, that it bears all the rare imprint of genius, that its appeal is immediately and profoundly moving, are beyond doubt. Nevertheless for an unknown American to break down the barriers of language in an alien land, and achieve such spectacular recognition, is a triumph infrequently enjoyed.
—The Woodstock Press
"Brilliant lyrical 'Earthscapes'...Benow has exhibited a variety of styles but all demonstrate her imaginative use of vivid, harmonious colors and a characteristic of rhythmic quality." —Art News
"Benow's strength is in her intuitive feeling for color demonstrated by pleasing harmonies that are musical in quality." —NY Arts Magazine
"Benow's strength is in her intuitive feeling for color demonstrated by pleasing harmonies that are musical in quality." —NY Arts Magazine
Original embossed hand colored etchings on fine archival paper
Small format etchings - paper 13.5x9.5" Prices and availability upon request.
By the Pasture Set-Morning, Noon & Twilight 1978 Images 4.5x3" Papers 13.5x9.5"
Field Four Seasons Set 1978 Images 2x3" Papers 13.5x9.5"
Medium format etchings - paper 19.5x13.5" Prices and availability upon request.
Large format etchings - paper 27x19.5" Prices and availability upon request.
Sheila Benow studied art in New York at the Ethical Culture School, Sarah Lawrence College and the Art Students League. Besides creating original hand-colored embossed etchings and paintings, Benow also designed record album covers, illustrated children's books and served as Director of Art at the Fleming School, New York. Her work can be found in such collections as Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Albrecht Druer Museum, Nuremberg, Germany; the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany; Associated American Artists, New York, New York; the Columbe D’Or Hotel, St. Paul de Vence, France; the Rose Gerlach Collection, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; and CBS, Los Angeles, California.
Benow was a pioneering figure in the printmaking field and one of the first female artists to create etchings via the metal plate process. Most of her designs reflect some aspect of nature or natural landscape.
Sheila's etchings, watercolors and acrylics are critically-lauded and globally-collected. After making an important international name for herself in Europe and Japan and living abroad for the past thirty years, the New York-born Sheila Benow returned to the United States in 2006 and chose Palm Desert as her new home. She was awarded Palm Springs Life Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
Benow was a pioneering figure in the printmaking field and one of the first female artists to create etchings via the metal plate process. Most of her designs reflect some aspect of nature or natural landscape.
Sheila's etchings, watercolors and acrylics are critically-lauded and globally-collected. After making an important international name for herself in Europe and Japan and living abroad for the past thirty years, the New York-born Sheila Benow returned to the United States in 2006 and chose Palm Desert as her new home. She was awarded Palm Springs Life Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.