Sylvia Benitez, an oil painter nationally known for her dreamy landscape vistas of Texas, has been selected the 2022 Artist of the Year by the San Antonio Art League & Museum.
Benitez, also an educator and art organization founder, will be celebrated with an opening reception and six-week exhibit of her work at SAALM, beginning Sunday, Sept. 25. The King William-area art museum has recognized local artists for the annual honor since 1945, based on the excellence of their work and active participation in the arts community.
“The San Antonio area is very fortunate to have a talented artist like Sylvia,” said SAALM President Claudia Langford. “Her work is exceptional, and her Artist of the Year selection is just the latest addition in a tradition of excellence that goes back more than 75 years.”
Benitez is the founder and president of the Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association (GAGA), a twelve-year-old nonprofit organization that serves women artists of south Texas. It has an active membership of sixty members and has served over one hundred artists since its inception.
Benitez is a keen observer of the Texas landscape. Her impressionistic vistas of fields, forests, mountains, lakes, and shadows create visual expressions that transcend the merely observed to a moving personal and emotional experience.
“My paintings are solace gleaned from nature, a retreat from time, a retreat from burden…. I retreat into them. Here I live,” Benitez said.
She has received numerous awards and grants, including two Pollock-Krasner Foundations awards and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Individual Support Grant, two National Endowment for the Arts Visiting Artist Fellowships, plus many others.
Her work has been shown in numerous museums, sculpture parks and galleries throughout the United States, including The Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Wave Hill, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Neuberger Museum of Art: SUNY Purchase, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The American Craft Museum, The McNay Museum of Art, Art Omi, Johns Hopkins University, The El Paso Museum of Art, The Islip Museum, The Abington Art Center, Texas State University's Mitte Gallery, The Schuylkill Environmental Center, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Franklin Furnace, NYC, The Beeville Museum, and The Museo De Historia, Anthropologia y Arte, Puerto Rico.
Benitez, also an educator and art organization founder, will be celebrated with an opening reception and six-week exhibit of her work at SAALM, beginning Sunday, Sept. 25. The King William-area art museum has recognized local artists for the annual honor since 1945, based on the excellence of their work and active participation in the arts community.
“The San Antonio area is very fortunate to have a talented artist like Sylvia,” said SAALM President Claudia Langford. “Her work is exceptional, and her Artist of the Year selection is just the latest addition in a tradition of excellence that goes back more than 75 years.”
Benitez is the founder and president of the Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association (GAGA), a twelve-year-old nonprofit organization that serves women artists of south Texas. It has an active membership of sixty members and has served over one hundred artists since its inception.
Benitez is a keen observer of the Texas landscape. Her impressionistic vistas of fields, forests, mountains, lakes, and shadows create visual expressions that transcend the merely observed to a moving personal and emotional experience.
“My paintings are solace gleaned from nature, a retreat from time, a retreat from burden…. I retreat into them. Here I live,” Benitez said.
She has received numerous awards and grants, including two Pollock-Krasner Foundations awards and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Individual Support Grant, two National Endowment for the Arts Visiting Artist Fellowships, plus many others.
Her work has been shown in numerous museums, sculpture parks and galleries throughout the United States, including The Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Wave Hill, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Neuberger Museum of Art: SUNY Purchase, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The American Craft Museum, The McNay Museum of Art, Art Omi, Johns Hopkins University, The El Paso Museum of Art, The Islip Museum, The Abington Art Center, Texas State University's Mitte Gallery, The Schuylkill Environmental Center, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Franklin Furnace, NYC, The Beeville Museum, and The Museo De Historia, Anthropologia y Arte, Puerto Rico.
Video of Sylvia Benitez's Previous Work
Sylvia Benitez, San Antonio Art League's Artist of the Year, 2022
I am inspired by South Texas: the smell of mingled grasses, the evasive sky, the rain and the sun, the bluff and the wind. Here, where I live, there still exists an untamed land relatively unmarred by modern footprint. From memory I try to capture this pioneer spirit. And so, my resulting paintings are not about one location in particular. But rather, they exist as an amalgam of many days and many sightings—the many variations of my home's protean beauty.
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