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SANTA FE, NM – Gazing upon one of Nathan Bennett's artworks of patina on bronze, with their images of tree limbs and moonlit landscapes, induces a feeling of dreamlike familiarity. These are places, it seems, you have visited before, subjects and materials at once comfortingly recognizable and yet eerily new and different. Such observations sum up not just the subject matter but also the medium, because Nathan Bennett lays legitimate claim to being the only painter who renders images in patinas on bronze plates. The Meyer East Gallery will host an opening reception to celebrate this unique artist on July 9, 2010 from 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM at the Meyer East Gallery at 225 Canyon Road. Through July 23, 2010.

“I feel that in order to fully understand my art, knowing a bit of its history is important. Alchemy started in the first century A.D. As time passed, the predominant goal of alchemists was to transmute basic metals into gold. This was done in great secrecy. Discovering such a process would bring unimaginable wealth and power. When religion began to play a part in Alchemy, the practice became a spiritual journey. Heaven and eternal life became the goal. All of these endeavors now play a big role in many facets of life as we know it. Alchemists used their intimate knowledge of metals to adorn sculpture with what is now referred to as a patina, and the patineur was born. During the centuries that followed, patinas stayed very basic; copper, sulfur, and ferric were applied using fire,” explains Bennett.

“In 1989, I made a clear and calculated decision to turn the art of patina back into alchemy. Soon after, my hot process patina paintings took their first breath. In the true spirit of alchemy, and with basic metals, I sought not for wealth, transmuting metals into gold, but rather, to manipulate them into a one-of-a-kind work of art. Using fire and metal, my spirituality was visualized, connecting me to heaven and God. Through hot process patina painting, I feel that I have found my eternal elixir. In a way,” says the artist, “I will live forever through my art.”

For the first time in Santa Fe, Bennett will be providing his collectors with a demonstration on how he develops his artworks, revealing how his patina paintings are created. This will not be a typical painting demonstration. Bennett will be using grinders, blowtorches, and chemicals to blast his art onto the unforgiving bronze metal plate. It will be an exciting opportunity to personally view how Bennett performs his alchemy. The public is invited to Meyer East Gallery, Saturday July 10 from 11 AM-4 PM.

Bennett came to this unlikely innovation through a natural chain of events. "All I ever was going to be, period, was an artist," says the 38-year-old Utah native, who grew up north of Provo and now lives just south of the city in Mapleton. Never a fan of formal schooling, he sought work right out of high school, landing a menial job at an area bronze foundry. His innate talent was spotted almost immediately. Two weeks later he'd been promoted to the mold department, and six months after that began learning patinas. "I was working with some of the best sculptors in the country," he recalls, "getting the feeling of shades and degrees and compositions."

Bennett knew he wished to be an artist from a very early age, and as an 18 year-old he got his first job in the arts, working as an illustrator. He was hired by Zion Marketing to illustrate a book, and though he attacked the project with vigor, he soon found the life of an illustrator was not all he had imagined it to be. "By the time I was twenty illustrations into the forty-illustration project, I knew that illustrating wasn't for me," the artist recounts. "I didn't like my work to be dictated by the project, I wanted to create my own work."

The opportunity presented itself in an unexpected and round-about way. After deciding not to pursue a college degree in illustrating and forfeiting scholarships he had received to that end, Bennett applied for a job at a fine art foundry that cast bronze sculpture for some of the best known sculptors in the country. "I took the job," says Bennett, "not because I wanted to sculpt, but because I wanted to be involved with the arts in some way, and this seemed like the kind of work that would allow me to pursue drawing and painting on the side while still being involved with the business of art on a daily basis."

Bennett worked in many different departments of the foundry, including chipping, blasting and mold-making, but when the foundry owner approached him to learn the patina process, an important link in the artist’s life was being forged. The foundry employed a master patineur, Ray Jonas, to apply the final chemical coat to the bronze sculpture, which gives the work its final color, but the man was pursuing his own sculpture career and wasn't interested in the incredible effort that was needed to keep up with the foundry's production. Bennett was apprenticed to the artisan and says that learning the patina process came naturally and easy to him.

"Patina is an ancient and, in many ways, very secretive art," says Bennett. "The chemical combinations, and the temperatures and techniques used to apply them, were closely guarded by a small handful of master-patineurs. They were usually passed from father to son, and it has only been very recently that anything but the simplest patina was known to more than 25-30 people in the world. I was very lucky to learn when I did and to be taught by such an incredible artist."

Before long, Bennett's skill had increased to an advanced degree, and sculptors were soon requesting him by name. He developed rich patinas that became his signature and helped the sculptors increase the value of their work. In 1996 he struck out on his own and formed Signature Patina, where he could patina sculpture from many of the various artists around the country.

While developing his skill as a patineur, another random and unlikely event occurred that led him down his current path. He was working one night on a large bronze base, and while it was tilted on its side he realized that his patina, which covered the lower portion of the piece, resembled a landscape, and that the raw bronze left on the upper reaches of the slab resembled a radiant sky. This observation remained on his mind after he had finished the piece and soon he saw, in his imagination, a full, detailed landscape created using the patina on bronze plate. The chemicals, oxides, nitrates and acids would be his paints, and eighth-inch thick sheets of silica bronze his canvas.

Soon Nathan had created his first piece using this technique, and though his first attempt was not all that he had hoped for, he knew the potential was there. He had discovered that the skill he had gained as a patineur could now be applied to his first passion, which was creating visually stimulating, representational, two-dimensional artwork. And now, not only did he have the skill and eye to be able to create the work, he had built relationships with artists of the highest caliber through his foundry work, and these artists were willing to critique his work and help him improve his talent.

Within a few months, Bennett began to experiment by applying his patinas with brush and blowtorch to flat bronze plates, and he's been refining that process ever since, while also earning a reputation among top sculptors as one of the nation's finest patineurs. Where other artists paint in oils, acrylics, or watercolors, he works in solutions of copper nitrate, titanium dioxide, and potassium sulfide, compounds that sound like they came straight from an alchemist's cabinet. "It is alchemy," declares Bennett, who is now in the process of taking his magic one step further, by developing a process to make prints on metal that maintain the visual integrity of his much-in-demand original patina paintings.

The patina-paintings that have resulted from having pursued this technique are dynamic and engaging. The polished metal that he works on gives Bennett's work a dancing and holographic dimension. What in oil or another traditional media might be a static landscape becomes a vibrant, ever-changing scene when infused in the metal.

"It has been a difficult process," Bennett says, "because I am the only one doing this kind of work. There are no examples to look up to, no existing works to learn from. Every time I start a new work, I am literally stepping into new territory."

Bennett has proven up to the challenge, and his patina-paintings have been hailed by collectors looking for work that is new and exciting.