Artist's Biography
Allison Bennett was born in Papua New Guinea in 1961. She is known as a painter and potter. She has always been artistic and her kindergarten teacher was the first person to recognise her talent. Allison won the first art competition she entered when she was eight years old.
After moving to Australia, Allison undertook formal art training in 1980 at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney with tutors such as the late Nigel Thompson and Ian Chapman.
From 1985 to 1987, Allison taught painting and drawing privately and through TAFE Colleges in Toowoomba, Tara, Chinchilla and Dalby.
In 1987, Allison married her husband Geoff and they had two sons.
While her children were at primary school, Allison taught ceramics to groups of children aged between six and twelve. She also worked with a creative team of teachers, parents and children to make award-winning floats for the Tweed Valley Banana Festival.
In 1994 Allison continued her art studies and completed a Ceramics Diploma at Murwillumbah College of TAFE.
After numerous successful exhibitions, Allison made a career shift from painting to pottery and exhibited her work at selected galleries throughout Australia.
Allison has exhibited her work widely in Queensland and New South Wales. She has also won numerous art awards, for her paintings and ceramics, including most recently first prize for traditional landscape painting at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney.
Allison expresses her approach to her work by saying: “I have devoted my life to art. I find it difficult to think of any other path that I might have followed with such commitment.
I like to think my work has a gentle humour, attention to detail, and an ongoing attempt to always move forward. If viewers can find in my artworks something that touches them, a link with another human being has been made. I like the thought that through art people can come together and share their lives, their common humanity, however fleeting or tenuous that may be. So, I consider myself a person fortunate in life to have been able to use a talent and pursue a dream”.
I make no attempt to instil profound or personal messages into my work, others always seem to see and find whatever it is they want in an artist’s work. I feel content that they will do that. If I can bring a degree of pleasure to someone’s life, my purpose will have been served.”