Elton Bennett - Style

Style

Bennett chose the silkscreen medium because of his belief that original art should be accessible to everyone. Prints allowed him to produce many original silkscreens at relatively affordable prices. Despite the fact that his prints now sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars, according to his daughter during his lifetime he never sold one for more than $15. Using silkscreens allowed him to vary the work by changing the colors and recombining or reusing elements to the point where a work was never finished and continually evolving - he could always tinker with it and improve it more. For example, a catalog of his artwork might include multiple images of a scene such as "Around the Cape" using different color pallets, such as blues, gold, greens, etc. or the same middle-background sailing ship may appear in multiple scenes such as "Down to the Sea", "Return to the River", and "Forest of Spars".